Which is not true of extremists, who must continually keep up their street cred. National Review started out opposing Trump, but now that he’s President I’ve noticed sometimes they support his actions. But when it comes to institutions, Kevin Williamson has a lesson for the extremists:
One thing about which thoughtful progressives and conservatives generally agree is that institutions matter. It is important to have a First Amendment and other protections for a free press, but you also need the New York Times, National Review, Wired, CNN, and, the times being what they are, In Touch Weekly and its Stormy Daniels coverage — or else the First Amendment is only a hypothetical. The irreplaceable nature of functioning institutions is why we can’t just drop off copies of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in Somalia and Afghanistan and expect to find thriving constitutional republics there a few years later. The right to a speedy trial doesn’t mean much if your courts are corrupt or inept. The right to petition the government for redress of grievances means nothing if the government is impotent or indifferent.
Like government agencies and political parties, the character and quality of the press matters enormously to the health of public discourse and, consequently, the health of democratic institutions. There are conservative media critics who have been cheering the prospect of the New York Times’ demise for many years, but the more intelligent ones want a better New York Times rather than a crippled one. It is more obvious if you live in New York City, but in spite of the Times’ ongoing bias problems and the partisan stupidity of its op-ed pages, the newspaper does irreplaceable work — work that RedStatePatriotAmericaFirstJesusGunsDerkaDerkaMAGA at Twitter dot com is not going to do in the absence of the New York Times.
Of course, he still believes in liberal media bias:
No one believes that the IRS or the FBI is above reproach. No one seriously believes that the editors of the New York Times would have treated a President Hillary Clinton and a President Donald Trump in the same way. (One likewise wonders what Fox News would have made of partially documented claims that President Bill Clinton had paid $130,000 in hush money to a porn star who says she had an affair with him.) President Obama’s so-called scandal-free administration was in fact rife with abuses of power, from the IRS to the ATF to the EPA to the NLRB. Trump may sometimes attack our institutions without good cause; the Obama administration gave critics good cause to attack our institutions.
Good news coverage brings subscribers, and subscribers brings survival. Or so the theory goes. If he wants to suggest that there wouldn’t have been the humiliating lie count currently applied to Trump, that would be because it would be unneeded. Behavior drives coverage.
But this remains a rebuke to Trump and his attacks on liberal democratic institutions, from government to the free press, and it’s good to see coming out of National Review. My occasional, random readings always leaves me shaking my head (or shrugging, if I’m not familiar with the subject); this has been the exception – only a half shake.
