Tocqueville Lives

An op-ed by my frequent coauthor:

William F. Connelly Jr.: Press and presidents

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/30/20

Alexis de Tocqueville lives.

Tocqueville’s 1830s classic “Democracy in America” impresses students today with how often his insights endure.

Regarding polarization, for example, Tocqueville notes “profound convictions are found only at both ends … in the middle is doubt.” Why do the extremes of both parties always seem so certain?

Tocqueville praises the founding generation, lamenting “the race of American statesmen has shrunk singularly in a half century.” Great men, he says, no longer run for office; democratic “envy” would not elect them if they did. Today is candidate quality slipping given the self-defeating envy of angry outsider populism?

Tocqueville notes the populist demagoguery of 1830’s President Andrew Jackson, “a man of violent character and middling capacity.” Sound familiar?

Like his friend, John Stuart Mill of “On Liberty” fame, Tocqueville vigorously defends freedom of the press; though, this does not prevent him from sharply criticizing the irresponsible abuse of press freedom.

Tocqueville tells us the American press is vulgar, verbally violent, inclined to “inflame human passions.” It is more interested in entertaining than enlightening citizens, presumably to peddle newspapers in his day or air time today. Sensationalism, coarse attacks and scandal-mongering sell.

Long before television and the internet, Tocqueville noted the unblinking stare of the media — “its eye, always open”— the better to afflict politicians. He witnessed, too, the tendency of the press to stampede toward pack journalism. Has much changed today?

Perhaps more so than in Jackson’s day, the president and press today suffer from co-dependency.

A presidential election, Tocqueville warns, is “a period of national crisis.” The president “no longer governs in the interest of the state, but in that of his re-election.” He “prostrates himself before the majority” (or perhaps his base?). “Intrigue and corruption are vices natural to elective government,” Tocqueville tells us, while the president “borrows the force of government for his own use.” During the “crisis of the election” re-election dominates the thoughts of the president, a criticism perhaps especially applicable to our narcissist-in-chief today. For a time, Tocqueville laments, the party is reduced to the president.

In 2020 we foolishly blame “partisan polarization” on parties, yet today our parties — now weak — no longer control their own nominations. Instead, media bosses rule, party bosses drool. In the 1830s, party boss Martin Van Buren was able to constrain Jackson’s ambition. Republicans seem unable to do so today with our chaos commander in chief. Why? Perhaps because the media bosses created this celebrity “Apprentice” president. Donald Trump is a creature of the “swamp” he decries. During the 2016 primary process, 80% of cable news coverage went to Mr. Trump; 20% went to the other 15 Republican candidates, including some party stalwarts.

The Weather Channel gives us “Storm Stories” all the time; cable news gives us Mr. Trump.

Tocqueville might be appalled by the new media which, if anything, has exacerbated the dangerous tendencies listed above. The voracious 24/​7 cable news cycle with its endless appetite for soundbites seems drawn to Mr. Trump like a moth to flame. Yet the “television presidency” has given way to the “Twitter presidency” with a social media circus in thrall to Mr. Trump’s tweets. Even worse, the echo chambers of balkanizing blogs promote voter paranoia, while the algorithms of our cellphone news feeds click us deeper into our separate cocoons of unreality.

The media with its pursuit of ratings, viewership and taps fixates on mediality over reality, empowering the populist demagoguery of candidates like Mr. Trump and Bernie Sanders. Social media further monetizes the anger and envy such outsider anti-establishment candidates feed on. The Twitter presidency was made for Mr. Trump. Next up: President AOC?

And yet, this year, just in the nick of time, South Carolina’s Democratic Party Boss, U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn had the good sense — and the influence — to rein in the runaway Burn for Bernie, during the South Caroline primary, thereby saving Mr. Biden, his party and maybe the nation. Today on the GOP side, former GOP governors John Kasich of Ohio and Rick Snyder of Michigan also are trying to rein in their party’s blustery bully in chief to save their party and the nation. They’ve failed, however, as witness the Trump family Republican National Convention. Most Republican governors and members of Congress were noticeably absent.

The irony of press and president symbiosis today is that precisely the populist outsider voters energized by the new media are the same voters most inclined to vote in opposition to media elites. The more the mainstream press rails against Mr. Trump, the more “deplorables” spite them by supporting the divider in chief.

Fake news gives us fake presidents.

William F. Connelly Jr. is John K. Boardman politics professor emeritus at Washington and Lee University.