Op-Ed as Shadow Cabinet
The tweet above says much: First that the institution of the op-ed has outlived its usefulness as we now have an overabundance of opinion in the world. Second that we are in desperate need of expertise. And third that columnists are no experts.
I’ll imagine this suggestion another way: This country needs a shadow cabinet of experts and leaders who will say what they would do if they were in power so as to put pressure on those who are, unfortunately, in power.
Imagine then if The New York Times or Washington Post assembled people who could and should be Secretary of State — Hillary Clinton, Madeline Albright, Colin Powell, for starters— to say what they would do with North Korea, Syria, Brexit, and so on, alongside others who would tackle issues in the economy, the environment, education, defense, health, justice, commerce, and social welfare. Rather than filling space with opinions, the fill space answering problems, providing prescriptions, devising policy, just like a real government would.
We have the beginnings of a model for this notion of a shadow government in the realm of ethics. Walter Shaub left his post as director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics in protest of Trump’s flouting of any standards of behavior and he then joined two fellow former White House ethics chiefs — Norm Eisen and the amazing Richard Painter — to, in essence, run an Office of Ethics in Exile via their running commentary on social media, in op-eds, and on TV.
This notion is not far off from Walter Lippman’s vision of establishing commissions of experts and scientists to guide public policy. Lippman thought they would inform government — but shit lot of good that would do now. Lippman also believed that the public was not qualified to hold informed opinions on matters of national and global import “for the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance.” He further argued that journalism was incapable of informing the public because — in James Carey’s summary — “news can only give, like the blip on a sonar scope, a signal that something is happening.” Or in Lippman’s words: “[N]ews and truth are not the same thing, and must be clearly distinguished. The function of news is to signalize an event, the fuction of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them into relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.”
It is all too clear that journalism is failing the nation and must reconsider its role. Throwing the camera on the podium where Donald Trump rants and rambles and calling that news is what got us into this mess. Stenography is unhelpful. Argument is divisive. Prediction is useless. Politics as entertainment is dangerous.
Journalism needs to start over with a view of what the nation needs. Today, among other things, we need experts. The good news from an otherwise depressing 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer is that the public has an increasing desire to hear from experts.
Enough with the idiots of government. Enough with the blatherers of media. We need to people who know what the hell they’re talking about. We need to give them a platform. We need them to join in productive conversation and deliberation and discernment of sensible paths forward. We need to put pressure on the government we are stuck with by showing alternatives that do make sense, strategies that are built on fact rather than testosterone. We also need a public conversation that is civil, informed, and productive. That was supposed to be journalism’s job. Journalism can find new ways to convene that conversation.
That is why I like Peter Shulman’s tweet. It proposes a way to transform the op-ed page— which, like too much conversation online, tries too hard to be too contrarian — into something useful and productive.
