Shots and Misses
What happened between Tara Reade and Joe Biden in 1993? I have no idea. I do know that Biden was thoroughly vetted by the Obama team before he was chosen as the vice-presidential candidate. There was a great deal to vet. Biden had been in the Senate since 1972 (this was 2008). He had dealt with personal tragedy when his wife and child died in a car crash. He nearly died from an aneurysm. He had a very long congressional record some of which looked bad in retrospect (Anita Hill). He ran for president twice without winning a single primary.
But Barack Obama one of the most deliberative politicians of this age, chose him for Veep. Their personal partnership was by any measure a great success. It was not about what they were able to accomplish. It was how they worked together — without the tension, say of JFK and LBJ or the disgrace of Nixon and Agnew.
So now in the midst of our 2020 national calamity he is the Democratic Party’s presumptive candidate for President, achieving a lifelong goal and fending off a torrent of allegations from the Trump universe: corruption (Hunter Biden), China (soft-on) and now Reade who has hired a Trump donor as her lawyer and opted for a streamed interview with Megyn Kelly, herself in professional limbo, rather than Fox’s Chris Wallace or anyone else.
There is still a way to go before the election and I don’t believe the results will come down to what Biden did or didn’t do 27 years ago to a clearly aggrieved congressional aide. But the furor over the issue highlights a phenomenon of our time: the interplay between scandal and the media’s competitive fascination with anything that is provocative or tantalizing. Since the beginning of the Trump presidency his critics — of whom I am most definitely one — have amassed three major campaigns against him: the Russia probe, the Kavanaugh nomination and impeachment.
In all three situations there was ample justification for attacks on Trump’s behavior, preferences and judgment. The reality is that in all these political dramas, Trump, essentially got the better of the case against him.
The Mueller investigation showed the extent of the relationship between Trump world and Russia’s strategy of interference and disinformation.
But Robert Mueller’s flat presentation and then Attorney General Bob Barr’s distortions undermined the report’s findings. And the media, in the broadest sense, reveled in the months of controversy. There were multiple investigative bestsellers, news scoops and obsessive television coverage, catering to both sides in the turmoil. The report itself became a huge national bestseller as a book including one version annotated by Alan Dershowitz, who later was one of Trump’s lawyers in the impeachment trial. A few crumb-bums landed in jail for crimes too obvious to ignore. But General Flynn, an admitted liar, was excused and if Roger Stone goes to prison, we will all be astonished.
Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, solidifying a 5–4 conservative majority in most matters, became another conflagration over facts. And in the end, Kavanaugh made it to the court where he will be for decades, despite what he did to women as a student in high school and college. That battle also produced books, television extravaganzas and reams of compelling coverage in the media, serious and tabloid.
Finally, there is impeachment, mesmerizing televised hearings, revelations and retribution and of course more star turns by journalists. The issue came down not to what Trump said — no doubt what that was — but how sinister was what he meant. We were fascinated by the spectacle — only the third such trial in history. But Trump’s side, again, claimed victory.
Now with the pandemic, Trump is ensnared in one of the greatest crises in American history — rhetoric has become so overblown that those words don’t actually have the impact they should. This is not Bill Clinton and an intern. This is not even the cover-up of an opera buffa break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters. This is the lives and livelihood of tens of millions of our fellow citizens and Trump’s appalling and cynical mismanagement of the federal response.
The problem is that the heavy weaponry of the political and media establishments has already been deployed against Trump. And he and his GOP basically blew them off.
Tara Reade is plainly troubled, and Joe Biden may be one of the reasons for that. The much bigger — much bigger — issue is what happens on November 3, to the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. This time, we cannot afford to miss.
