The start of a new year, preceded by the presidential election from hell, has many in the media contorting over their roles–from self-criticism to self-flagellation.
To be sure, the media–notably electronic and tabloid–helped make Donald Trump just as it had over-covered Sarah Palin eight years prior. It’s right in their celebrity-politico wheelhouse. Only with Trump, the fascination had been ongoing for decades. A presidential run then amped up network coverage. By last spring, Trump had already received nearly $2 billion in free media coverage.
Les Moonves, the chairman-president-CEO of CBS, candidly summed up Trump’s candidacy last year. “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” conceded Moonves. Beyond shameful.
But there was also a sense that while this inexperienced, narcissistic candidate is great copy, there’s no way that this arrogant billionaire “populist” wins a nomination, let alone an election.
Count me in. I know weird stuff can come out of lowest-common-denominator-appealing, GOP primaries, especially when the variables included Tea Partiers, alt-rightists and hypocritical evangelicals. But I thought once the candidates had been winnowed down to a manageable number, Trump would be outted–for not, obviously, knowing enough. Can’t hide behind bluster when it’s just a couple of other candidates left. “The Art of the Deal,” where Trump acknowledges “playing to people’s fantasies,” surely didn’t apply here. Surely.
What we didn’t count on is that the “debates” continued on as galvanizing, show-biz gotcha exercises. Great ratings, queuing sponsors and overwhelmed, ultimately enabling moderators.
Then it was the nominee debates, with partisan viewers seeing and hearing what they wanted to see and hear. “Baskets of deplorables,” WikiLeaks and James Comey factored in. And one fourth of the electorate saw an unlikely, cult-figure savior.
Yeah, there’s plenty of blame, rationalizing and perfect-storm scenarios to address what happened. It makes perverse sense. But ultimately nothing is a good enough excuse for about a quarter of the electorate, however frustrated with their lives and fed up with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, to not recognize the manifestly obvious: They were voting to put a dangerously unprepared, existential threat into the White House. Didn’t matter.
But it did. And it does.