Let Not the Land Once Proud of Him...

 I was as disappointed with Biden's debate performance last Thursday as anyone—and I'm just as scared as it is possible to be about the future of his candidacy, and the risk it poses of a potential Trump victory. But I haven't appreciated the role the news media has tried to play—in the wake of these events—as self-appointed kingmaker. Still less have I welcomed the snide and mean-spirited way in which some commentators have done so.

Ever since the debate last week, the New York Times has tried to railroad a certain narrative about what should happen next. On the left-hand side of the homepage, they show one article after another about "panic" inside the Democratic party. Then, on the right, they have the editorial pieces drawing the obvious moral that we are meant to reach from this information: replace Biden at the head of the ticket. 

Then there are the pieces headlined so as to suggest the bold claim that Biden is rethinking his candidacy—but when you open them, you realize that all he reportedly said to people close to him is that he recognizes his bid for the presidency is in danger (which is not at all the same thing). 

Then, there are the articles highlighting various verbal slips on the president's part. After his abysmal debate performance, we are indeed primed to attribute great significance to all of these. They seem to confirm our worst fears. Yet, when one reads into the details, no one of the reported incidents actually seems that serious or damning in itself. 

It has long been known that the media creates facts as much as it reports on them. This is not because they are lying: but rather because the way they select and arrange facts leads one to a foreordained conclusion. This is the thrust of Walter Lippmann's argument in Public Opinion—that voters are always responding to a certain "picture in their heads" that the media itself has helped to form. 

Thus, as William S. Burroughs notes in his cranky but entertaining collection of interviews, The Job, people tend to read their newspapers and think they are forming an "opinion" based on what they read—when in fact, the opinion was formed for them by the arrangement of words on the page. The news story suggests automatically the opinion they are meant to develop on its basis. 

I was able to observe this process in action yesterday. A friend called me up, suddenly very excited about Kamala Harris's candidacy, and fully persuaded that she would do a better job against Trump than Biden. Now, this may or may not be true—I don't know. But it was remarkable how quickly this opinion congealed within hours of the Times running a front-page story trying to reboot Harris's reputation. 

The media can indeed, then, play a large role in shaping people's opinions—and, thereby, in altering political events. But the Times's attempt to do so over the last week feels like an especially naked flex of this raw power. They seem to think they can conjure a pattern of events into being by describing it as if it had already taken place. Here's how the story is meant to go:  

First, the media establishment turns on Biden (with the Times's own stable of in-house columnists in the lead); then, Biden rethinks the future of his candidacy; then, an obviously better replacement rises from the ashes. 

When Biden then stubbornly refused to follow this script, and events proceeded to take their own alternative course, the Times nonetheless doubled down on the story it prefers to tell.

We are about to test the limits, then, of the media's power to shape events. We will see whether they have as much power as they think they do. 

Biden might indeed no longer be the right person for the job, after that disastrous debate. Someone else—such as Harris—might have a better chance against Trump. But if that happens, I don't want it to be because our self-appointed opinion leaders decreed it. I don't want the Nick Kristoffs and Tom Friedmans of the world to play kingmaker, and "report" a foreordained outcome into being. 

If Biden leaves this race, it should be because he has made the decision that it is best for the country—not because he was forced out by a self-righteous Establishment that arrogates to itself the power to tell the American people what to think. He should retire with honor—and with gratitude for what he accomplished—not to the sound of unseemly crowing.

I was listening to the Rational Security podcast yesterday, and one of the cohosts cited an example of the ugly kind of Schadenfreude that Biden's poor debate performance has provoked in some media Establishment quarters. Apparently, someone on Twitter made a mean-spirited joke about Biden approving funds to combat Parkinson's disease, saying it was "bad timing" (Biden does not, for the record, suffer from Parkinson's). 

It should not be to the sound of this cruel mockery that Biden ends a long and honorable career in public service. It should be he and the voters who decide his fate, not the catcalling pundits. And, if he decides it is time to hang up his spurs, he should be allowed to do so with dignity. 

I was reminded of John Greenleaf Whittier's poem, "Ichabod." In its lines, the poet laments the disappointments and betrayals of Daniel Webster's career, in its final chapter (especially the latter's decision to support a congressional compromise on the issue of slavery). But he also calls on the public not to scorn the great politician's downfall, but rather to mourn him with the honor he deserves. We should adopt the same wisdom here: 

So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore!
The glory from his gray hairs gone
Forevermore!

Revile him not, the Tempter hath
A snare for all;
And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
Befit his fall!

[....]

Let not the land once proud of him
Insult him now,
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,
Dishonored brow.

But let its humbled sons, instead,
From sea to lake,
A long lament, as for the dead,
In sadness make.