The New York Times, which enjoys poking fun at Fox News for claiming to be “fair and balanced,” outdid itself in fairness and balance on Sunday. In its Review section it offered its readers two long columns, one laying out how Donald Trump might win the first debate, another on how Hillary Clinton might win.
To consider the latter question the Times selected David Axelrod, President Obama’s “senior strategist”, who began by recalling how Clinton had whipped Obama in several debates in 2008, because she was “Fluent in policy and crisp in delivery… an accomplished debater…”. His advice, “Instead of engaging Mr. Trump in an ugly contest of insults [a contest presumably to be started by Trump], the best course for Mrs. Clinton may be to navigate around him … take her case directly to the camera and the American people…. hold him accountable for his most provocative comments and utter lack of substance…. Pitch herself as a champion for economic fairness.”
There’s more, but you get the idea. No advice on how to articulate her vision for America, Axelrod’s problem being that she doesn’t have one, as Charles Krauthammer has pointed out, unless you count more entitlement programs, higher taxes, and more of the same stuff that has brought us to where we are, globally and domestically.
Trump’s New York Times-appointed adviser is none other than Frank Bruni, who relishes defending “A billionaire (or so we’re told)” … one who is “irredeemably dangerous … [has] forfeited any legitimate claim to the presidency.” With him for a friend….
Unfortunately for the country, or at least for his selected adviser, the debate gives Trump an undeserved opportunity for “a fresh appraisal, a do-over…”. Voters who have not been following the campaign carefully might see Trump as presidential; those who have been more attentive are presumably beyond his reach even if he “presents himself … as genial and essentially a safe choice for people who are looking for change.” There follows Bruni’s “litany too long to be excused, a record too gross to be expunged.” Alas, a measured performance by Trump might work with voters – “He peddled comparable fictions to get this far … The hell of our political process is the brevity of so many Americans’ memories and the shallowness of their engagement, which could be a final stroke of outrageously good fortune for a con man who has been too lucky already.”
Nothing like a fair and balanced presentation by the Old Gray Lady, who at least had the good grace to make clear in its lead editorial to those inattentive voters who had not already guessed by its biased news coverage that it is supporting Clinton. (Interested defenders of the paper’s unbiased news reporting are directed to the main news section, where a full page is devoted to listing 31 “Whoppers From Trump” in this week alone; Clinton’s tenuous relation with the truth is nowhere mentioned.) Making it doubly generous for the paper to give advocates it chose to represent each candidate equal time and space on page one of its Review section.
