Grading the News

Many of my friends have interesting things to say about the election.  I do not.  But in the eleventh hour, I finally got into watching the news.  It’s been transfixing to me.  Here are my grades for some of the major news anchors on two dimensions: impartiality, and how much I’d like to go on a road trip with them.  I offer neither as an ideal to strive for. 

Wolf Blitzer.  Wolf Blitzer is flawlessly neutral, though his perfect impassivity makes me just slightly less impressed by the achievement.  All the same, I would be fascinated about what he would be like in person.  I imagine a Wolf Blitzer road trip as a seamless procession of descriptively accurate sentences.  “At this moment we are passing what – by all available evidence – appears to be a barn.  This is Wolf Blitzer, in North-Central Wisconsin…”

Impartiality: A+

Road Trip: A

 

John King.  John King has to be one of the big winners of this election cycle.  His tireless obsession with detail is already taking on its own legend.  This parody is spot on, but also reveals the absurd difficulty of his real-life job.  With a bizarrely comprehensive knowledge of county-level data seemingly anyplace in the country, John King comes off as half old-school newscaster and half lord of whispers.  “I have a contact in Cumberland County – a Republican but just a solid county official – who tells me she’s seeing more support for the President than had been expected.”  Could he keep it up all the way across Pennsylvania?  I wouldn’t bet against him.   

Impartiality: A

Road Trip: B+

 

Nora O’Donnell.  I’m so impressed by Nora O’Donnell.  Her impartiality is extraordinary, down to the smallest nuances of facial expression and intonational contour.  She is surrounded by people who don’t go to any great pains to conceal their perspective, which complicates things.  On election night, I heard her repeat a colleague’s impassioned comment, but somehow her restatement cancelled its normative valence.  Her verbal fluency is near perfect, yet she seems fully human.  “The president is maintaining his lead in Georgia, but it’s getting prosciutto thin.”  Does she think of this stuff in the moment? 

Impartiality: A+

Road Trip: A+

 

Lester Holt.  Lester Holt is the paradigm of respectability.  Every sentence, every question, every expression – no mistakes.  He could have any personality in the world, and we would never know.

Impartiality: A+

Road Trip: B+

 

Savannah Guthrie.  Savannah Guthrie may be the most endearing human.  Any agent that did not find Savannah Guthrie endearing I would suspect of being a zombie, which also would move my credences about whether zombies are possible.  In the long hours of election night she broke the monotony by teasing her co-anchors with great affection, highlighting exactly those parts of their performances they seemed to most value about themselves.  She’s not especially impartial, as the send up of her town hall with Donald Trump emphasized.  But in the end, she just wants Americans to get along, and believes they can.  She concludes the night with a kind of civic homily admonishing us to have faith in each other.  I don’t even go in for these values, but I’m still kind of inspired by it.  She even lent Kate MacKinnon the actual suit she wore for the town hall so that Mackinnon could wear it to make fun of her.  Maybe if we were more like Savannah Guthrie, Savannah Guthrie would be right about us?

Impartiality: B+

Road Trip: A+

 

Chris Cuomo.  Chris Cuomo is full of mistakes, misstatements, and bias.  Somehow it all makes him seem more relatable and genuine.  Plus, his biases aren’t exactly partisan in the Fox/MSNBC way.  He’s just against anybody punching down.  Chris Cuomo is like the American citizen’s protective brother.  “Hey, leave those vote counters alone!  Don’t you know they’re doing a civic service?!  You got a problem, take it up with your Secretary of State!”

Impartiality: B

Road Trip: A

 

Fox News, News Desk.  I have to say, I think Fox News did a great job.  If anything, they seemed a bit overzealous in making calls for Biden.  They may have Republican faces, but the news staff seem committed to getting it right. 

Impartiality: A+

Road Trip: B

 

Remaining Questions:  What would the world be like if media outlets were more civil?  Mostly that would be good, I think.  But it’s surprisingly hard to say, because sometimes in-group incivility in media actually pushes people away from their party.  Are rural voters responding differently to media?  I would like to know.  Would I purchase SG monogramed clothing to match my RF monogramed clothing?  Yes.  How would Wolf Blitzer respond to Savannah Guthrie on a road trip?  No idea.

 

The Debate Will Be Terrible

 Who will win the debate?  No one.  No one will win, because it will be terrible.  Political debates are always the worst.  And I say this as someone who loves debate.  I always want debates to be like the debate episode of the West Wing.  (It was a simpler time.)  But that’s not how they are.  What is going wrong?

If ever there was ever a debate that might have been like the West Wing, it was Clinton vs. Trump.  Clinton was highly qualified, incredibly prepared, and extremely competent.  Trump was…not.  And yet, debates didn’t move the dial for Clinton. 

There’s a longstanding debate among debate people about whether sometimes the judges are just wrong.  I’m on the side that it’s fine to blame the judges – but then maybe that’s because I lost my share?  (Or at least, the judges voted against me, which is note the same as losing.)  Anyway, I do think sexism is part of the story, but I think the story is more complicated than just sexism against Clinton. 

In the last few days lots of people have been posting debate advice.  I want to get in on this before it’s too late.  Here are seven guidelines.

1. It’s hard to gain ground; it’s easier to lose ground.

For the most part nobody cares about debate.  So as long as you don’t do anything dramatic, you can play for a draw.  If you do shake things up, that’s taking a risk.  Once as a speechwriter in high school I lost a race for Boy’s State Governor, when victory was otherwise a good bet, by going for something interesting.  (Yes, I called myself a speechwriter in high school.)

 2. Be charitable.  It’s a mistake to try to make your opponent’s position look as bad as possible.

A very successful competitive debater once told me that the biggest mistake novices make is trying to argue that everything their opponent says is wrong.  For some reason it’s very tempting to think the right play is to make the opposing side look as weak as possible.  But this intuition is exactly backwards.  You should try to make your opponent’s position look as strong as possible.  This makes you look better.  If the opposing argument is so bad, why does it look like a draw from the outside (see rule 1)?  When you make your opponent’s points look good, it makes you seem like you’ve considered all the angles.

3. Facts are boring.

Lots of people on the internet are saying this so I won’t make heavy weather of it, but the studies are in.  You can’t get someone to believe the facts by telling them the facts.  That is not a winner. Once as a speechwriter in high school I lost an election for student body president by thinking it was a good idea to make it about “the issues.”  To my knowledge, I may be only political consultant in the actual world who has literally never won anything.  Good thing I got a philosophy job!

4. Stories have to be interesting.

Politicians tell the worst stories.  Just the worst.  “Lemme tell you about my friend, First Name.  First Name is a decent, hard-working American. But because of policies like the one Opponent favors, First Name is having a rough time…”  This is insulting to everyone.  More importantly, it’s a terrible story.  Anyone could have predicted everything what happens in advance.  For a story to be compelling, something unexpected must happen. 

I know it doesn’t sound like I’m giving debate advice, but I am.  If you make the story didactic, it becomes a way of trying push someone around with the facts.  People hate that.  This isn’t just folk wisdom.  Pushing people with facts does nothing, or maybe even provokes a backlash.  Most of us hate the experience of someone trying to persuade us, because it literally feels like a threat our autonomy.  On the other hand, when we hear a story we can relate to, we don’t feel threatened.  Here is the crucial point: we are more likely to be persuaded when nobody is trying to push our beliefs around. 

You know who told good stories?  Jesus.  The reason they were compelling is that it was genuinely hard to figure out what he wanted people to get out of them.  As theologians like John Dominic Crossan and Amy-Jill Levine have pointed out, Jesus was more provoking people to consider something than trying to get them to believe anything in particular.  Imagine if Jesus had said, “I have a friend who was a good, hard-working guy, but then the Romans came round with these policies…”  Nobody cares. 

5. You have to think about what your opponent will say back to what you say.

This is so obvious I don’t know why I’m writing it. But for some reason people are tempted to think about their opponent’s position, not what their opponent will say back when they’ve finished talking.  That’s a mistake.

6. It is very difficult to land pre-planned, contrived jokes.

Antithesis: it is remarkably easy to land a joke that could not have been written in advance.

7. Only attack someone if the audience will think they have it coming.

It doesn’t matter how many unjust deaths your opponent is responsible for; the audience will only take your side in a fight if they have just witnessed bad conduct for themselves.  We all love to see someone who really deserves it get the receiving end of a verbal attack.  But it’s hard to get someone to reveal that they deserve it. 

If you have never seen it, Jon Stewart’s premeditated dismantling of Tucker Carlson on his own show is a masterclass in baiting someone to throw the first punch, then going all in.  In less than three minutes Carlson finds himself on his heels in an argumentative terrain he hadn’t planned for or thought about.  Jon Stewart gets him to reveal exactly the disposition for which Stewart wants to criticize him, and then doesn’t let up for the duration.  It’s incredible to behold.  As the leading youtube comment notes, you can witness Tucker’s “villain origin story.”

So much for rules.  Now, advice.  I like backseat quarterbacking as much as anybody.

The advice: It’s weird that a Republican President who used the executive branch to make a propaganda video for North Korea should be a difficult mark in a debate.  But, here we are.  Probably the smart money bet debating Trump is to recite boring Democratic talking points so your base can pretend like you “won,” and call it a night. 

Say, though, that you wanted to try.  In that case, consider trying to get Trump to say something vaguely disrespectful of the military or another conservative institution.  This is apparently not that difficult in private.  Start with praise.  “It’s great that the President is against bombing people for no reason – so good job throwing out Bolton, etc.”  Then suggest consensus.  “But in our system it’s important that the president be willing to listen to people who know more.”  It’s very unlikely to work, but might Trump be tempted to say he was right in one of his famous un-doings of military decisions?  One could also try pushing to see if Trump will say more on opposing democratic outcomes of elections in America.

Of course, it’s all a long shot.  The likely outcome is boring.  May I recommend instead counterprograming with election episode of Gilmore Girls?  It’s not that realistic, but at this point, who’s counting?

Why It's OK to Ignore Politics

I've got a new book out titled Why It's OK to Ignore Politics, just in time for election season! I argue that citizens have no moral duty to be politically active and, indeed, have strong moral reasons to forgo politics in favor of more effective forms of altruism. I realize this is a controversial view. In the book's introduction, I write: 

 

As a philosopher, I earn a living by challenging conventional wisdom. For instance, I routinely present my students with the argument that they should kill one innocent person if they can harvest her organs to save the lives of two others. Although most students don’t buy the argument, they are happy to at least entertain its merits. But when I present an argument for not voting, they’re downright scandalized. Murder? Well, they can see the point of that, but staying home on Election Day?! There are just some ideas that decent folk refuse to consider.

 

However, I believe that the prevailing defenses of a duty of political participation don't succeed. I'll write a few posts detailing my arguments, but for now I want to draw attention to one part of my case: most of us are probably overconfident that we are casting our vote for the right candidate. Just as a doctor shouldn’t prescribe a medication for her patient if she can’t trust her medical judgment, citizens shouldn’t vote for a candidate if they can’t trust their political judgment. 

So why might we be self-skeptical of our political beliefs? For one, there is the familiar of rational political ignorance. Citizens tend not to know very much about particular policies and politicians or the relevant social science. A popular response to this worry points to various shortcuts or heuristics that citizens might use to vote well. You could consult social scientific experts, the candidates’ parties, endorsements for the candidates, and so on, to inform your vote. But there are a number of problems with the appeal to heuristics. First, we tend to be biased in favor of ideologically-friendly heuristics that confirm the partisan conclusion we started out with. In this case, it's hard to see why using heuristics would be an improvement.

 

Moreover, the case for heuristics is strongest when voters defer to experts who share their basic values but are more up to speed on the facts about the issues and candidates. But his leaves open the question of what your basic values should be. As I put it in the book:

 

George Will is a fine stand-in if you’re a staunch conservative. But the most important question remains unanswered: is staunch conservativism true? By analogy, few would advance the following claim: “You don’t need to do all that work figuring out what to think about religion. Don’t bother reading the world’s major religious texts or analyzing the theological claims they make—just use the Pope as a proxy.” No doubt the Pope is a good proxy if you want to know what a Catholic should think about contraception. But the question of whether you should be a Catholic in the first place is still unsettled. 

 

You might reply that you'll think hard about your basic values and try to ensure that your selection of heuristics is informed and unbiased. However, note that the need for heuristics arises because political ignorance and political irrationality are rational: it's not worth your time to inform and debias your vote because your vote will have no meaningful impact on the outcome of the election. But this consideration suggests that it's not worth your time to inform and debias your selection of heuristics either. As Ilya Somin writes, "Since the whole point of relying on opinion leaders is to economize on information costs, the voter is unlikely to invest heavily in researching the leaders’ qualifications.” 

More on Mask Mandates

At Radical Classical Liberals, Andrew Jason Cohen and I have posts on mask mandates that I thought would be of interest to readers of this blog. See here and here. Both Andrew and I agree there is a moral obligation to wear masks, but oppose laws that mandate mask wearing. But I argue that Andrew's way of supporting his view does not succeed, and offer different grounds for opposing mask mandates. The grounds I offer overlap with some of the argument Jess Flanigan made at this blog.