Psst. Over here. Over here.
You want to hear a trade secret?
The bulk of journalists who cover the so-called “halls of power” in Washington, Ottawa, Canberra, London, Paris and beyond prefer routine over spontaneity.
You see, predictability is easy. It’s comforting because most capital cities are mundane places where boring is not only an agreeable fact on the ground, but also a prevailing state of mind.
That is why the overwrought reaction to the lively dressing-down US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance gave Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was so in keeping with the White House press corps’ stubborn fondness for the veneer of practised civility over the impulsive truth.
Unlike so many other pundits and columnists who rushed instantly and almost universally onto the familiar cable news networks to express their disbelief and shock over the “embarrassing spectacle” of America’s tactless commander-in-chief “humiliating” his “wartime hero” guest, I was mesmerised by the remarkable scenes unfolding live on my computer screen.
Rather than watching an orchestrated, forgettable set piece featuring smiling foreign dignitaries and heads of state visiting an ever-so-polite president in the Oval Office, it was refreshing to witness a blatant exhibition of the crudeness, rudeness, and brutishness of power politics that usually occurs far, far away from the cameras and, hence, reporters and the public.
They will be loath to admit it, but the sea of scribes who stood like mute mannequins while Trump, Vance, and Zelenskyy traded rhetorical blows for several bruising rounds, expected another tame, pedestrian day at work like so many other tame, pedestrian days at work.
They know the predictable role they play during these choreographed pantomimes.
Step 1: Go to the Oval Office.
Step 2: Record the foreign head of state saying nice and sweet stuff about the US president.
Step 3: Record the US president saying nice and sweet stuff about the foreign head of state.
Step 4: Report that the US president and the foreign head of state said nice and sweet stuff about each other.
Step 5: Later, call sources who say that, in private, the US president and the foreign head of state did not say nice and sweet stuff about each other.
Step 6: Report, quoting anonymous sources, that despite having said nice and sweet stuff about each other publicly, privately, truth be told, the US president and his grinning guest cannot stand one another.
That was, in effect, the formulaic arc of much of the reporting after French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer made their pilgrimages to Washington last week to mas