Reporters are cyclical, fickle, and secretly in love. Someday they might even learn to love President Trump in public.
Just give it time. This has happened before.
Take a disgraced GOP president. Wait four to eight years after their last day in office. Then elevate a comparatively crazy candidate from that same party while wringing dry the retired president with nostalgic think pieces, over-the-top remembrances, and fluffy interviews. And voila! The beleaguered becomes the beloved in retirement.
Victor Davis Hanson details this “strange — or rather, predictable — metamorphosis” of Republican presidents in his latest column. Ronald Reagan was “a dangerous extremist” kook in the same way that George H.W. Bush was “a wimp” and George W. Bush, “a warmonger.” After the White House and under the right circumstances, each have become the picture of statesmanship.
The apotheosis of Reagan is ongoing and will probably be followed up by the elder and possibly even the younger Bush. The adoration increases proportionally as the past fades. Once a baby killer, Dubya has already become a celebrated amateur painter.
Jack Shafer of Politico records a similar phenomenon that is occurring in real time with the elderly Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. The press has been so quick to eulogize the still-living man, Shafer wonders whether there will be enough material left for McCain’s obituary.
None of this is happening in a vacuum though. It is a matter of comparison.
“McCain is the subject of the adoration, he’s not the cause,” Schafer writes. “The media’s love for McCain, while palpable and longitudinal, has always been relative. The competition for journalists to say something nicer about him has always been less about describing who the senator is than who he is not.”
Quite obviously, McCain is not Trump. Putting the senator or placing any of the last three Republican presidents side by side with him generates a record-cleansing nostalgia. It is not unique.
The temptation of our superlative-obsessed political coverage is to conclude that everything is worse than it ever has been or it ever will be again. Some have already set up pre-Trump and prepared post-Trump demarcations because everything changed with his presidency. This is a fallacy. The truth is that things can always get worse and the scarier truth is that someday journalists might look back and cherish this president.
While Michelle Wolf gave an awful monologue at the White House Correspondents’ dinner, her political analysis was right in one regard. “You pretend like you hate him,” she quipped, “but I think you love him.”
“I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you He couldn’t sell steaks or vodka or water or college or ties or Eric, but he has helped you,” Wolfe said. “He’s helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV.”
Is that uncomfortable? Yes, because Trump is nothing like any of the last three Republican presidents who were generally decent. Is that probably true? Also, yes.
Imagine what happens when Trump walks away from Washington. Populism won’t leave with him. The forces that thwarted the plans of machine politics are still at play. If things don’t get better, the electorate could always deliver someone worse. The nightmare scenario is that that someone is not just sinister but boring. Then when there is real news but little interest, the press may even learn to love Trump.
