June 20, 2024 | Reading Time: 4 minutes
The cultivated naivete of the Washington press corps
We should talk about it.
We should talk about the cultivated naivete of the Washington press corps. We have discussed at length the makebelieve that animates so much of political reporters’ coverage of the election, especially Donald Trump’s campaign. But we haven’t begun to discuss the kind of childlike wonder that characterizes them, as individuals.
What is cultivated naivete? The first thing to say is once you see it, you can’t stop seeing it. It is everywhere you look in political journalism. The second thing to say is it’s the opposite of what you’d expect from reasonable and fully developed adult humans. It treats politics as if it had no history. It treats Republicans as if they were children. And it treats Democrats as if they were the only grown-ups in Washington.
The naivete I’m talking about is learned. It is rehearsed. It is a role played in a never-ending theatrical performance. And it is central to the culture of the Washington press corps, in that without it, political reporters could barely do their jobs as they’re expected to.
I say cultivated because members of the press corps are not naive. If anything, they are cynical, so cynical that they don’t believe anyone means anything they say. The naivete I’m talking about is learned. It is rehearsed. It is a role played in a never-ending theatrical performance. And it is central to the culture of the press corps, in that without it, political reporters could barely do their jobs as they’re expected to.
It’s important to discuss the press corps’ cultivated naivete, because democracy and the rule of law suffer for it. The citizenry spends vast amounts of time and resources arguing about things that don’t require argument on account of those things being transparent bullshit. In any other setting, reasonable and fully developed adult humans wouldn’t take such bullshit seriously, on account of its being bullshit, but because the bullshit in question usually comes from the Republicans, we all end up debating it, wearing ourselves out in the process.
It’s important to discuss the press corps’ cultivated naivete, moreover, because discussing it, and bringing as many people as possible into the discussion, might prove effective in changing their behavior. Political reporters are accustomed to accusations of bias, but not of gullible unseriousness. They see themselves as sophisticated and savvy. So it might be painful to realize that a large segment of the public pities them for appearing to have just fallen off the turnip truck.
Let me illustrate. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum was on Fox on Wednesday. He said: “Under Joe Biden, we are actually living under a dictatorship today.” His reasons? The president is “bypassing” Congress on immigration policy and “protecting our border.” He’s also “bypassing” Congress on student-loan forgiveness. “Those are the things that authoritarians and dictators do. They don’t follow our democratic processes and they just assert their own liberal view.”
Now, as far as I know, no one in the press corps is presently taking Burgum seriously. But if he becomes Trump’s vice presidential pick, which is what he was auditioning for, they will, and at that point, they will also take seriously his allegations that “we are actually living under a dictatorship today” and, weirder still, that authoritarian dictators “don’t follow democratic processes and just assert their liberal view.”
No where in the history of the world has there ever been a liberal authoritarian dictator, unless by “liberal,” we mean “Marxist” or “Communist,” which would mean the discussion of these allegations has entered a whole new level of makebelieve. Reasonable and fully developed adult humans, especially ones who are steeped in politics and political history, should know this. Yet these same people will almost certainly choose to play along, because that’s what’s expected. They aren’t allowed to be grown-ups. They must pretend to be kids.
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Another example is Donald Trump’s claim that his felony conviction not only won’t hurt his campaign. It will help it. Members of the press corps, having recently fallen off the turnip truck, fell for that one, too, even as Trump and the Republicans were demonstrating that the opposite was true by trying to stop the trial from moving forward.
A new poll out of Suffolk University found that 64 percent of voters in Michigan, a state Trump can’t lose, said his conviction will make them less likely to support him. In Pennsylvania, another crucial state, it was 65 percent. Just over half in Michigan said they would jail him for his crimes. In Pennsylvania, it was 61 percent. Now, polling is weird these days, I have to admit, but this one has common sense to it. It’s simply not a good idea to run for president after being found guilty of felony crimes. Trump wants us to believe in his fantasy, however, and instead of being reasonable and fully developed adult humans, the press corps looked at what he was doing and said gee whiz golly, maybe it’s true.
Of course, the biggest fantasy is that Trump is fit to be president. As Steven Benen said recently, anyone who knows anything about him knows “he delivers long, meandering remarks; he can’t maintain a straight thought; and no matter the topic, the guy simply can’t overcome his profound ignorance and indifference toward reality.”
This is, in other words, a description of a human who has not yet fully developed into a reasonable adult. It’s a description of a child – in this case, a man-child exhibiting signs of dementia – who insists on everyone around him believing his delusions or face his tantrums.
And members of the Washington press corps, whose job descriptions require them to accept everything Trump and the Republicans say with gee-whiz-golly wonder, take his delusions seriously, which means the rest of us must as well, which means everyone is totally exhausted. Every day feels like we’ve been trying to seek the approval of toddlers instead of doing what reasonable and fully developed adult humans do.
John Stoehr is the editor of the Editorial Board. He writes the daily edition. Find him @johnastoehr.
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