Response to Trumping the Press

(See: Just Above Sunset: Trumping the Press)

I don't get it! As far as I can tell, nobody anywhere, in any media, has used what, to me, should be the obvious headline:

"Donald Ducks Debate"

(Believe it or not, they used to pay me to write captions like that back when I worked for AP Photos in New York. No, come to think of it, that one they would have thrown back at me.)

Is this about Megyn Kelly, or about Trump finding a way to capture headlines just before Iowa? The answer is yes, but I think there's even something more than that.

I remember years ago, when Chris Christy first started being talked of as a possible GOP candidate for president, I thought he would be a major contender when the time came, simply because he's a tough guy and a bully. Forget low taxes and small government and abortion, if you boiled the typical conservative down to his essence, you'd be left with someone who values shows of strength over anything else.

Christy's real downfall came in hugging Obama. Bridgegate? Okay, but only because he came off looking like he lost that fight, and the hard-core conservatives who are powering the campaign these days will write you off if you (a) hug Obama and (b) if you come off looking like a loser in a fight.

[Insert Donald Trump here.]

Is Trump a conservative or not? Here's Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic last summer:

In public statements, he has advocated government healthcare, a woman’s right to an abortion, an assault weapons ban, and paying off the national debt by forcing rich people to forfeit 14.25 percent of their total wealth. When the man married his third wife, he invited Bill and Hillary Clinton to the wedding, and he has given many thousands to their political campaigns and their foundation. He’s donated many thousands more that helped elect Democrats to the Senate and the House. And George W. Bush was “maybe the worst president in the history of this country,” the man said in 2008. “He was so incompetent, so bad, so evil.” 

On paper, this is not someone you’d expect to excel in the 2016 Republican Party primary. But Donald Trump is excelling.

Why? Because he represents the logical extension of all that is conservative in America. He's a bully. He likes to push people around. He's noticed that being tough is the sort of thing that impresses his largely low-education followers. The nastier he gets, the higher his numbers go.

Remember Hobbes' Leviathan?

In 1651, when Charles II was in exile in France, Thomas Hobbes published The Leviathan – life is mean, nasty, brutish and short, and that means we need a strong central government run by a king with near-absolute power...

Except for "and short", that's a good description of Trump -- mean, nasty, and brutish.

Trump wants to show off his strength and bargaining abilities, which, in the case of the upcoming debate, means, first of all, negotiating a better deal with Fox News, either by having them fire Megyn Kelly, or at least have her removed as a moderator. He knows he's got them over a barrel, since their ratings will soar if he shows up, and will drop if he doesn't.

So Fox News' boss, Roger Ailes, doesn't back down? Okay, he'll punish Ailes by, instead, staging some other event Thursday night, to raise money for "veterans and wounded warriors" -- which, I guess, is even cleverer than raising money for, say, widows and orphans, or maybe the Kitten and Puppy Rescue Fund. The rubes at his rallies will buy this, the pundits will call it brilliant, but count me among those who scoff at its baldfaced cynicism, just another sign that American politics has come to resemble Buffalo Bill's Cowboys and Indians Traveling Circus.

I found myself yesterday, while watching the news, saying to my wife something I hardly ever hear myself saying: "Boy, I hope Fox News doesn't back down or give in!" But then she reminded me that "there's no chance that Roger Ailes will back down!"

And of course, because we both worked for him back in the 1970s -- at TVN, a news syndicator owned by conservative brewer Joe Coors, who founded the company about when Nixon resigned because, I've always contended, he wanted to get the idea of a Ronald Reagan candidacy into the public consciousness -- we knew she was right.

One of my personal memories of Roger was showing up for work one afternoon, just after some broadcast union had declared a strike on TVN, to see a crowd of employees standing in a circle around him as he was pacing back and forth, shouting obscenities into a phone outside his office.

Someone told me he was on with President Ford's press secretary, Ron Nessen, who had been trying to persuade Roger to withdraw his scab camera crew from a Ford event, since none of the other networks would film it with us there. Paraphrasing here, I heard Roger loudly tell Nessen to grow some fucking balls and tell the other fucking networks that if they don't want to cover the fucking event, that's their fucking choice, but our crew is there to cover the fucking news, and we're not leaving.

Incidentally, Roger won.

The fact is, Roger Ailes is not only a conservative, he's of the tough-guy school of conservatism, as is Donald Trump. They both enjoy confrontation, and neither likes to be pushed around. I suppose it's not that much of a risk Trump is taking in this showdown, although I remain convinced that one of these days, his star will yet fall out of the sky, and just maybe enough Iowans will notice that The Donald Ducked Out of the Debate, and will think less of him for it.

And as much as I, as a liberal Democrat, have my problems with Roger Ailes and Fox News, I really want him, and them, to win this one.

I know this is too much to hope for, but wouldn't it be nice if there were such a thing as a reverse boycott of the debate -- that is, people who would otherwise not watch it, instead tune in, just to boost the ratings?

And for gods' sake, do not tune in to whatever the Donald has decided will be more worthwhile for voters to be watching tomorrow night.