Ezra Klein Makes A Blindingly Obvious Discovery

Ezra Klein bowed before a picture of the late, great David Broder, dean of DC punditry, as he did  most days, and humbly asked for guidance. “What is thy bidding, Lord Broder?”

With that, the voice of David Broder came unto Ezra. But His was not the thunderous voice of a jealous and wrathful god, issuing stern commandments and demanding blood sacrifice. On the contrary, Broder was a kind and polite, though never loving, deity. He spoke in a soft dull voice and used soft dull words; they made you think of quiet middle roads in the middle of nowhere that led to no particular place at all, where soft dull suns always shone on soft dull grass and the flowers were never too bright. It always made Ezra want to curl up on the sofa with a craft beer and watch old reruns of Washington Week and Meet the Press. Broder spoke:

“America has lost its quintessential optimism and self-confidence. If partisanship and gridlock continue, Americans will lose faith in their institutions. The only way to get it back is to follow the way of the Beltway pundit. What is the way of the Beltway pundit, Ezra?”

“The way of the Beltway pundit is to avoid extremes at all costs. He strives for bipartisan consensus in all matters, for that is the path toward light.”

“And how does the Beltway pundit achieve this?”

“The Beltway pundit achieves this by maintaining bland neutrality in all things, regardless of the moral consequences. He knows that both sides must always share equal praise and equal blame in all disputes, great or small. That is the DC way.”

“Is it ever acceptable for a pundit to take sides?”

“Yes, in fact, a Beltway pundit is obligated to take sides against any figure who is too extreme and threatens the Washington Consensus, but he must take care to do this only after he knows his opinion is safe and will not offend Those Who Matter.”

“And what happens if he offends Those Who Matter?”

“He’ll lose access to the powerful and never be invited on MSNBC or Meet the Press again. Chris Matthews won’t be his friend anymore, and David Brooks will use him as an example of the breakdown in our civic discourse. He might even be cast out of the Beltway and forced to live among Those Who Do Not Matter, where they drive Kias and smoke cigarettes.”

“But what happens if a pundit stays on the right path?”

“If a pundit stays on the right path, he becomes an insider, and once he’s an insider he’ll never be wrong again, even when he’s wrong; he can write of things he knows nothing about and still be considered an authority, and he can make trite observations that other insiders will pretend are original.”

“There’s nothing more I can teach you, Master Ezra.”

And with that, Ezra dashed off to make an observation about Donald Trump that has been blindingly obvious to anyone who doesn’t live within the blinkered confines of elite DC punditry:

The secret to Trump’s success, the insight that has separated him from his competitors, is that he has cared less about the nature of the coverage he received than that he received coverage at all.

“Even a critical story, which may be hurtful personally, can be very valuable to your business,” Trump said in his 1987 book The Art of the Deal …

This is the law by which Trump lives his life. Attention creates value, at least for him. Before Trump, every politician hewed to the same basic rule: You want as much positive coverage, and as little negative coverage, as possible. Trump upended that. His rule, his realization, is that you want as much coverage as possible, full stop. If it’s positive coverage, great. If it’s negative coverage, so be it. The point is that it’s coverage — that you’re the story, that you’re squeezing out your competitors, that you’re on people’s minds.

This was Trump’s true political innovation: He realized that presidential campaigns — and particularly presidential primaries — had become reality shows, and the path to victory was to get the most attention, even if much of that attention was negative.

Ezra Klein has just now learned something that Trump’s spiritual ancestor, P.T. Barnum, discovered in the nineteenth century: There’s no such thing as bad publicity. This is particularly true in our illiterate, TV dominated age, where shiny distractions are all that matter and people have the memory of gnats. Trump understands this with every breath he takes. It’s instinct for him. He’s a TV obsessed cretin in a cretinous TV age. Trump devours attention, good or bad, like a ravenous vampire and instantly craves more. The media give it to him because he’s good for ratings, and the public watches because they they bored, cynical and hopeless.

Trump also knows that our politics are a sick reality TV spectacle, whereas Klein is apparently just figuring this out. But that’s okay. Klein’s slowness to understand is, I suspect, a calculated career move. Being right or accurate, or having an insightful understanding of things, is not too highly prized on Planet Beltway; holding proper opinions is. One may only be right when it is right to be so, otherwise you might offend Those Who Matter and lose your place.