As I perused Steve Benen’s MaddowBlog piece on Sean Spicer’s appointment as White House Press Secretary, I began to speculate on Mr. Spicer’s ability to understand what he’s in for – and if he doesn’t understand, then if he’ll ever figure it out. First, just one of Steve’s observations on Mr. Spicer’s … loose connection to reality:
More recently, after Trump was caught lying about voter fraud in this year’s presidential election, Spicer said, “There was a Washington Post story not too along ago that showed the number [of fraudulent votes cast] could be as high as 14 percent.” The Post hadn’t actually published any such piece; Spicer was completely wrong.
With Mr. Spicer’s accession to one of the highest profile posts in the world will come one of the highest levels of fact-checking anyone experiences. Does he understand that he’s moving from a political sphere where the truth is only valued in relation to its conformance to ideology and its usefulness in moving tribal members to a public sphere in which facts matter? Does he understand that attempting to formulate public policy based on lies will have negative consequences – if not for you, then for someone else?
And when he comes down for the last time from the mountain and discovers that people, outside of his own little political sphere, just don’t care about his opinions, and consider him one of the worst occupants of his position, will he be able to understand why?
Or is he just too much of an ideologue? I suspect so; given how often he’s wrong, I do not think he loves truth.
With apologies to The Simpsons TV show for using the enchanting word embiggen.
