Paradoxically, it may be better for a politician to hand the press a steady stream of negative story opportunities, rather than starve them, such that they obsessively cover just a few negative stories.
Take two Democratic "gaffes" that got obsessive coverage:
(1) Hillary Clinton gave a speech that, in context, was arguing that liberals should take the concerns of Trump supporters seriously, since half of them were just people who'd been poorly served by government.... but the media fixated on one out-of-context line where she said the other half were a basket of deplorables, and they practically turned that into the catch-phrase of her campaign. It became such a big deal that there are multiple poli-sci books focused on it, and to this day there's a wide range of "deplorables" merchandise available for right-wingers.
(2) Obama had a similar moment, when he gave a speech that included a line about working class people in old industrial towns being bitter and clinging to guns... a line the media used to portray him as an elitist, and which they're still taking out for a spin in the wake of the latest mass shooting.
For the most part, Clinton and Obama were cautious speakers who avoided any obviously offensive lines, so when they served up a rare nugget that could be taken out of context and fitted into the media's narrative about the Democrats being arrogant and condescending, those became constant refrains in the corporate media for years.
Now compare that to Donald Trump. You can look at the transcript of a single MAGA rally speech and find more gaffes on that scale than you'd find looking through Obama's and Clinton's whole careers. Every few lines Trump would spew the kind of statement that, if it had come from a Democrat, would be treated as such a misstep that it would have place of prominence in his obituary. Like, do you think Democrats are snobby elitists who look down on people from the other side of the political aisle? How about this rancid red meat Trump served up to a MAGA crowd:
"We got more money, we got more brains, we got better houses, apartments, we got nicer boats, we’re smarter than they are.... We’re the elite. You’re the elite. We’re the elite."
That kind of shameless, boastful elitism would be the death knell for a Democrat's career, but for Trump, it just blended into the background noise and was promptly forgotten.
It's not just gaffes, either. Consider sex scandals. Biden and Trump each had a very similar sex scandal: each was accused by a former acquaintance of having reached under her skirt, back in the 1990's, and having groped her, without consent. But in the media, you will find literally 20 times more material about Tara Reade, and her accusation against Biden, than about Kristin Anderson, and her nearly identical accusation against Trump. The mainstream outlets did one major story after another, during the 2020 campaign, about Reade's claim, for months on end. Anderson, if she got mentioned at all, usually just had her name tacked onto a long list of names of various women who'd made assorted sexual impropriety claims against Trump.
Or consider the huge amount of coverage of the USS Cole, during the Clinton years. A US navy ship was put in harm's way by the president and ended up getting hit with a deadly attack. The media held that security failure against Clinton with months of obsessive coverage. Compare it to the number of stories about the attack on the USS Stark, in the Reagan years -- when a US navy ship was put in harm's way by the president and ended up getting hit with a deadly attack. That got a few news cycles then basically vanished down the memory whole. Google "USS Stark attack" and you get 1,500 hits. "USS Cole attack" gives you 15,500. The Stark attack had a body count over twice as high, but the Cole got over ten times the attention. Or compare, say, the deadly attack on our consulate in Benghazi in the Obama years to the multiple deadlier attacks on our consulate in Karachi in the Bush years. Karachi almost immediately became obscure trivia, while Benghazi was treated by the media as one of the biggest stories in the world for four years.
I think what happens is that the media takes their impartiality mandate as a requirement to do equal amounts of negative coverage for both sides, regardless of what each side is doing. So, if Trump is alleged to have assaulted 20 women and you do 100 stories on that, and Biden is alleged to have assaulted one woman, you have to do 100 stories on that, too. If Trump says 100 things that insult Democratic voters and you do 100 stories on that, and Clinton says one thing that insults Republicans voters, you have to do 100 stories on that, too.
You'd think that would still be better for the Democrats, since voters would realize there are fresh screwups and offensive comments from the right every day, whereas the media's forced to beat the same dead horse for Democrats for months on end. But I'm not sure. I think maybe when you hear constantly changing negative stuff, it just kind of blends into the background and doesn't end up defining anyone, whereas when you hear the same thing over and over for months on end, it is almost like brain-washing, where it turns into an automatic response when you hear a name.
It works almost like a commercial jingle. The same way you might reflexively think "Just Do It" when you see Nike, you can immediately think "Benghazi" when you see Clinton, simply because they've been paired constantly in the media for years. That's why, for example, utter trivia like Al Gore bragging about his role in facilitating the development of the Internet became almost a knee-jerk reaction when people hear his name ("oh yeah, he 'invented the Internet." Hahaa!")
What do you think when I say "Elizabeth Warren"?
I'm willing to bet one of the first things that popped into your mind is the fact she claimed Native American heritage (which she actually has, but distantly enough that many think it's unseemly for her to mention it). That's one of the core features of her political "brand," like it or not. It's one of her only clear vulnerabilities, so the media covered it exhaustively year after year, and that ingrained it in the public mind as a defining fact about her. It's like an advertising jingle that automatically pops into your mind when her name comes up, thanks to sheer repetition in the media.
Now how about Donald Trump? He also lied about his ancestry. In order to try to get more favorable treatment for a business deal in Germany, he said his father was born in Germany, which he knew was untrue. But he's said it over and over again in contexts where he thought it might benefit him. It was a willful lie about ancestry in pursuit of a career edge (the very thing Warren is wrongly accused of), and yet how far down the list of facts about Trump would that fall for you, if you were to start listing? Warren's vulnerability is an isolated one, so the media turned it into her defining characteristic, whereas Trump's is just lost in the noise of his constant misconduct and does him absolutely no political harm.
So, yes, maybe screwing up more often is safer, politically. It's the difference between harmless background noise and a defining media characterization.
Take two Democratic "gaffes" that got obsessive coverage:
(1) Hillary Clinton gave a speech that, in context, was arguing that liberals should take the concerns of Trump supporters seriously, since half of them were just people who'd been poorly served by government.... but the media fixated on one out-of-context line where she said the other half were a basket of deplorables, and they practically turned that into the catch-phrase of her campaign. It became such a big deal that there are multiple poli-sci books focused on it, and to this day there's a wide range of "deplorables" merchandise available for right-wingers.
(2) Obama had a similar moment, when he gave a speech that included a line about working class people in old industrial towns being bitter and clinging to guns... a line the media used to portray him as an elitist, and which they're still taking out for a spin in the wake of the latest mass shooting.
For the most part, Clinton and Obama were cautious speakers who avoided any obviously offensive lines, so when they served up a rare nugget that could be taken out of context and fitted into the media's narrative about the Democrats being arrogant and condescending, those became constant refrains in the corporate media for years.
Now compare that to Donald Trump. You can look at the transcript of a single MAGA rally speech and find more gaffes on that scale than you'd find looking through Obama's and Clinton's whole careers. Every few lines Trump would spew the kind of statement that, if it had come from a Democrat, would be treated as such a misstep that it would have place of prominence in his obituary. Like, do you think Democrats are snobby elitists who look down on people from the other side of the political aisle? How about this rancid red meat Trump served up to a MAGA crowd:
"We got more money, we got more brains, we got better houses, apartments, we got nicer boats, we’re smarter than they are.... We’re the elite. You’re the elite. We’re the elite."
That kind of shameless, boastful elitism would be the death knell for a Democrat's career, but for Trump, it just blended into the background noise and was promptly forgotten.
It's not just gaffes, either. Consider sex scandals. Biden and Trump each had a very similar sex scandal: each was accused by a former acquaintance of having reached under her skirt, back in the 1990's, and having groped her, without consent. But in the media, you will find literally 20 times more material about Tara Reade, and her accusation against Biden, than about Kristin Anderson, and her nearly identical accusation against Trump. The mainstream outlets did one major story after another, during the 2020 campaign, about Reade's claim, for months on end. Anderson, if she got mentioned at all, usually just had her name tacked onto a long list of names of various women who'd made assorted sexual impropriety claims against Trump.
Or consider the huge amount of coverage of the USS Cole, during the Clinton years. A US navy ship was put in harm's way by the president and ended up getting hit with a deadly attack. The media held that security failure against Clinton with months of obsessive coverage. Compare it to the number of stories about the attack on the USS Stark, in the Reagan years -- when a US navy ship was put in harm's way by the president and ended up getting hit with a deadly attack. That got a few news cycles then basically vanished down the memory whole. Google "USS Stark attack" and you get 1,500 hits. "USS Cole attack" gives you 15,500. The Stark attack had a body count over twice as high, but the Cole got over ten times the attention. Or compare, say, the deadly attack on our consulate in Benghazi in the Obama years to the multiple deadlier attacks on our consulate in Karachi in the Bush years. Karachi almost immediately became obscure trivia, while Benghazi was treated by the media as one of the biggest stories in the world for four years.
I think what happens is that the media takes their impartiality mandate as a requirement to do equal amounts of negative coverage for both sides, regardless of what each side is doing. So, if Trump is alleged to have assaulted 20 women and you do 100 stories on that, and Biden is alleged to have assaulted one woman, you have to do 100 stories on that, too. If Trump says 100 things that insult Democratic voters and you do 100 stories on that, and Clinton says one thing that insults Republicans voters, you have to do 100 stories on that, too.
You'd think that would still be better for the Democrats, since voters would realize there are fresh screwups and offensive comments from the right every day, whereas the media's forced to beat the same dead horse for Democrats for months on end. But I'm not sure. I think maybe when you hear constantly changing negative stuff, it just kind of blends into the background and doesn't end up defining anyone, whereas when you hear the same thing over and over for months on end, it is almost like brain-washing, where it turns into an automatic response when you hear a name.
It works almost like a commercial jingle. The same way you might reflexively think "Just Do It" when you see Nike, you can immediately think "Benghazi" when you see Clinton, simply because they've been paired constantly in the media for years. That's why, for example, utter trivia like Al Gore bragging about his role in facilitating the development of the Internet became almost a knee-jerk reaction when people hear his name ("oh yeah, he 'invented the Internet." Hahaa!")
What do you think when I say "Elizabeth Warren"?
I'm willing to bet one of the first things that popped into your mind is the fact she claimed Native American heritage (which she actually has, but distantly enough that many think it's unseemly for her to mention it). That's one of the core features of her political "brand," like it or not. It's one of her only clear vulnerabilities, so the media covered it exhaustively year after year, and that ingrained it in the public mind as a defining fact about her. It's like an advertising jingle that automatically pops into your mind when her name comes up, thanks to sheer repetition in the media.
Now how about Donald Trump? He also lied about his ancestry. In order to try to get more favorable treatment for a business deal in Germany, he said his father was born in Germany, which he knew was untrue. But he's said it over and over again in contexts where he thought it might benefit him. It was a willful lie about ancestry in pursuit of a career edge (the very thing Warren is wrongly accused of), and yet how far down the list of facts about Trump would that fall for you, if you were to start listing? Warren's vulnerability is an isolated one, so the media turned it into her defining characteristic, whereas Trump's is just lost in the noise of his constant misconduct and does him absolutely no political harm.
So, yes, maybe screwing up more often is safer, politically. It's the difference between harmless background noise and a defining media characterization.
