As my millions of followers have noticed, no doubt with considerable disappointment, I’ve been holding back lately, both on a) those events taking place in the Middle East and on b) the election campaign taking place south of the 49th. Why? Because everything that can be said on either of these fronts has been said. So when you can’t add anything, don’t parrot. But now I do have something to add, at least on the election front. Though first a few squawks of my own:

If in supplying the Zyclon B the Krupp corporation was culpably complicit with the Holocaust, then surely so is the Biden administration with the ongoing daily massacres in Gaza. But a Trump administration will be at least as complicit. So that would be a wash. Or would be were it not that Trump has promised to deliver the Ukraine to the Russians. Hmm … Moreover, were I a woman I wouldn’t want to entrust my reproductive freedom to the legislature of the state in which I happen to reside. On the other hand, a Trump victory could prove a serious setback for wokeism’s illiberalism. And his rhetorical flourishes about tariffs and deportations are just that. Both will die the death of a thousand qualifications. So when it’s all said and done – and thank God it soon will be! – I’m stymied as to how to cast my druthers. And so I won’t.

But I do have a druther about maintaining – or should I say restoring? – the stump speech/interview distinction. To explain:

All four candidates in this election, Harris, Trump, Walz and Vance, as well as their surrogates, have their stump speeches. Trump is a convicted criminal. Putin wouldn’t have invaded had I been president. Trump has threatened to weaponise the DOJ. Biden already has. A GOP victory will spell the end of American democracy. No, the real threat to it is the Dems. And so on.

Fair enough. But though each candidate is demanding it of the other, no candidate wants to be interviewed. Why not? Because in an interview the candidate has to perform the awkward pivot from what’s being asked – to which he must assiduously avoid giving an answer – back to the stump speech. And it’s the awkwardness of that pivot that telegraphs that avoidance.

Worse yet, what happens when the interviewer ignores the pivot and reiterates the question? The candidate pivots yet again. And then again. And then the interviewer moves on to the next question, eliciting the next three rounds of pivoting.

But now imagine if, instead, it went something like this:

Interviewer: Senator Vance, did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?
Vance: I’d rather focus on the future rather than the past.
Interviewer: Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?
Vance: I think the more important question is …
Interviewer: Let the record show that you’ve declined to answer my question.

Imagine the interviewer, having then moved on after, say, two more questions with these three rounds of pivoting, he dismissively declares the interview over. What would the candidate do? Well, neither he nor any of his surrogates would ever consent to be interviewed by that interviewer again, and so the network would have to reassign him.

Fair enough. But suppose the network elected not to. If you want to be interviewed on our network, this is what you can expect. No takers? Perhaps. But suppose one candidate took on the challenge. Then wouldn’t the other have to accept it as well?

I should come up with a name for this radical departure from convention. I know. Let’s call it journalism.

Categories: Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, Social and Political Philosophy

Tags: Harris, journalism, Trump, US election, Vance, Walz