It´s the economy, stupid: Bill said it–did Hillary listen?Sometimes you wish Bill was back, but there´s another story I have in mind right here: Not the story of how Hillary Clinton failed to take Bill Clinton´s most important piece of insight with her into her own presidential bid. Not, the story of how her failing to address the fundamentals of economic inequality in a convincing manner, led to the election of a president and subsequently a cabinet with far more of a racist inclination than what is the case with the majority of Trump voters. The majority of US voters and Americans are not racist. Let´s begin there.
A week of newspaper reflections on Donald Trump is over. Every morning, before work: The Nordic newspapers, and the British, mostly. And then the New York Times. It is Saturday morning, a good time for listening to Fresh Air Radio. Arguably the most interesting radio station anyplace for those wishing to understand US politics. Added to these daily reviews, there has been a full week of satirical commentary for me: Some of them headlines from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. Letters to the editor, and various blogs.
If interested, you can find National Public Radio on this link.
It used to be that you watched TV on TV, but these days you read TV on a website. I would not say it makes you any more informed, as much as reading TV headlines makes you question the nature of news a little faster. Part of what you read are statements of anxiety, statements of ridicule. Not all, but much. A sense that the voters of the US have misunderstood — somehow. In short: Half the US voters have misunderstood, since they elected Donald Trump. The other half — “our half” — got it right, but still they lost. Now let´s all hunker down and hope that The Donald keeps his fingers off the red button and his feet in his mouth – we have already heard enough.
And yes, the above scenario is very much a caricature. Media coverage around the world cannot be summarised, and certainly not in a single paragraph. Summarising is not without merit, however. One would be surprised when comparing headlines: The general framework obviously reflects the fact that these US elections were an “upset” . Unexpected results gave rise to a debate on the nature and relevance of polling, pundits and news analysis.
A quick look at headlines and photos of the incumbent president suggests a surprisingly “pre-framed” story: The normal starting point seems to have already been set in the following ABC: (A) Donald Trump is a scandal. (B) The US voters are not voting wisely. (C) The world has become more dangerous.
And that ABC is a problem. If the news media are quick to critique how they failed to get the election story right, and equally quick to vilify both the incumbent president and US voters, not much have been gained.
Or so it would seem. Beyond and behind the surface-scratching news analysis is a deeper story of a change coming to the US, like it is coming to the UK, France, and other countries. The deeper story is not that US voters do not understand how to vote. It is not that Donald Trump understood campaigning better than Hillary Clinton. The deeper story may well be that political stakeholders — and the news analysts – do not understand the impacts and consequences of globalisation all that well.
Time for some new policy-workshops, muddling through that difficult issue of fairness one more time?
Listening to a range of downloaded podcasts, Fresh Air Radio and other shows on National Public Radio I am assured that the public debate in the United States has critical voices. These are deeply probing voices. The debates have a quality far beyond the average TV and Radio debate in Norway — as US matters are concerned. And there is a reason for it, beyond the fact that US debaters are best qualified to discuss the US: My sense is that US voters have a much higher understanding of constitutional issues than what we “outsiders” commonly give them credit for.
In our criticisms of these elections, reference is often made to TV, as for instance the kind of TV news run by FOX News. Reference is made to Americans who are (sic!) capable of electing a business man, thinking that a business man will fix a middle class broken by globalisation. And true, there is a lot of that.
But more important is what we are now witnessing in newspapers like the New York Times and many others, a number of key websites and in magazines like The Atlantic: A kind of deeply probing debate about what happened — why it happened, and what it represents. For instance: New York Times today, writes on the appointment of Jeff Sessions to become the next Attorney General:
In 1986, President Ronald Reagan nominated Jeff Sessions, then a United States attorney from Alabama, to be a federal judge. The Republican-controlled Senate rejected Mr. Sessions out of concern, based on devastating testimony by former colleagues, that he was a racist.
Or the same newspaper, on the same day, on the appointment of Michael Flynn as National Security Adviser:
Of all the disturbing scenes in the presidential campaign, the Republican Convention speech by retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn stood out. During a fiery address in which he lamented the decline of American exceptionalism and lambasted the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, General Flynn joined the crowd in chants of “lock her up!” Smiling slyly, he shouted: “Yeah, that’s right, lock her up!”
It was grotesque, but not entirely surprising for a military intelligence veteran who has earned a reputation for hotheadedness and poor judgment. Americans of all political backgrounds should be alarmed that General Flynn will be President-elect Donald Trump’s national security adviser. It’s likely, given his record, that he will encourage Mr. Trump’s worst impulses, fuel suspicions of Muslims and bring to the job conflicts of interest from his international consulting work.
Now, listening to Fresh Air Radio, I am struck with the orientation of the debates and discussions: The level of involvement, the belief in open debate, the sense of resilience in a system that may have its flaws but still keeps a high ceiling on discussion.
It is an antidote to the Nordic news media who never excelled in sensible analysis of the US political culture. News analysis and in-depth documentary:
Here is a link to a sum of debates on National Broadcasting Corporation Norway. See for yourself.
What they miss is essentially the multitude and variety of the US electorate – the groundswell of opposition from below, and the the ideological color mapping beyond the two dominant parties; the Republicans and the Democrats.
Maybe time is coming around for a much closer look at how the US public critique actually works? What I am listening to right now is a debate on the constitutional powers and limitations of the US presidential office. I am not sure NRK could have matched it. How much do Norwegian kids learn about constitutional issues in elementary school? In middle school? In high school? How much is it a part of our own debates? When did you last read the Norwegian constitution?
Before this debate, I listened to another one on the rising inequality and resulting deterioration of the US middle class. This is another issue where a range of great documentaries have been around for some time, to better explain. Robert Reich, a famous professor of economics and also a key labor politics figure in Bill Clinton´s presidency, is the host of one of them. You can find in on the NRK website, as well. Or listen to it on YouTube here: Inequality for All.
Given that all Nordic journalists would only have to go to one particular website — Intelligence Squared – one would perhaps expect that these Nordic news media would arrive at this question: Should we make at least ONE news story about the deep-set debates now going on in the US about inequality and the failures during the Obama Administration? To counter the general point of view that US voters are non-educated, fat, racist, unemployed, white, middle aged, men, who do not seem to understand much?
That story is elsewhere, and missing. The big story missing in Nordic news coverage of US politics: It´s the economy, stupid! Bill Clinton said that. He had it as a poster on his wall during his first presidential bid. Had Hillary listened and taken it seriously, she would have won.
And oh yes, here is that website — Intelligence Squared: Go Check It Out.
Robert Reich, in another interesting presentation, right here: Have a thoughtful Saturday.