Ed. Note: Nicole Lafond will be back to helming Where Things Stand quickly.
Next week, the 2024 governmental project will hit one of its foreseeable low points. The 2 significant celebration candidates will fulfill in a nationally telecasted argument — and whatever we understand from viewing these 2 guys in public life for the last 40-50 years and our lived experience of their presidencies for the past almost 8 years will be tossed out window.
Instead, we’ll get theater criticism separated from politics or policy. We’ll watch as their age and cognitive capabilities are evaluated. We’ll have gaffe counters and word clouds and various other tricks to shot to imbue the occasion with significance and significance after the compound hasactually been removed away. Whose one-liners and quips will win the day?
You can blame the needs and conventions of TELEVISION broadcasts, or the dispute mediators, or the “low info” citizens the disputes lookfor to reach. You can blame the press corps for over-investing in these packaged occasions, replicating for their readers and audiences the exactsame fundamental protection that every other outlet is supplying. You can blame partisans who pin their energy and interest for their prospect on something as unpredictable as a argument.
None of what I’m explaining was any less real in 2020 or 2016 or 2008 or2000 But it comes around onceagain in 2024 with a especially disconcerting level of discordance. We understand so much about each prospect. No one is actually in an info vacuum. The terms of the dispute are so greatly various not simply from past years however inbetween the prospects themselves. This isn’t about Social Security lock boxes or tax cuts or health care policy.
It’s about the existential concerns dealingwith democracy, and I’m not sure there’s any method for a dispute to capture that. Ponder, for circumstances, the typical kind of gotcha concerns that mediators will pepper a prospect with. Do you pledge to veto a acrossthecountry abortion restriction? Will you let the Trump tax cuts