2017 minus 31: The Fox and The Donald

As I write this, it’s the afternoon of 1st December. This means we’re now a few hours short of exactly one month to 2017… just short of one month until we can say farewell to this arsewipe of a year, just short of one month until we all can say farewell to “2017 minus…” blogs. And let’s be fair: that is the most important things, after all. 

But not yet, folks. Not quite yet.

Onwards.

Of the hundreds of fast fictions I’ve written, there are few I remember writing the opening line of, stopping, rereading it, and then going “oh yes”. 

One of them, written almost exactly ten years ago, though… well, the opening line always stuck with me:

Ever since armies had been embedded with news organisation rather than the reverse, the reporters had been waiting for the first attempted coup.

I’ll come back to that in a minute.

There’s not much I’ve found ‘interesting’ about US politics during the past three weeks. There’s been lots that’s scared me, plenty that’s worried me, some stuff that’s concerned me, but very little that I’ve found merely ‘interesting’. 

One of the few things that I guess would have to be included in that category would be the historical precedents. No, that’s not exactly right because there have been precious few precedents for anything that’s happened since November 8th. What I’ve found interesting has been the contrasts to precedents, and because of those precedents, I’ve been relearning and rediscovering a lot of history; the history of how things are usually done.

I’ve learned more about ‘transition’ and how it normally operates. I knew quite a bit, to be honest; US politics and Presidential politics has been a hobby horse of mine ever since my sixth form lecturer John ramm introduced me to the subject. But in the past few weeks, I’ve been reminded of much, and learned even more. I’ve learned what the traditional methods, ways of doing things, are… and have discovered how they have been tweaked previously for specific presidential transitions. 

As I say, much of it I knew before, kind of, but I’m not sure I realised how this bit connects to that bit, how the fact that this thing occurred meant that that thing happened next time. From the huge to the middling. I relearned how and why the inauguration was changed from March to January, and how and why Ronald Reagan was the first to have the inauguration on the West Front of the United States Capitol Building, rather than the East).

I’ve learned how and when security briefings started for a President-elect. I’ve learned about post-election press conferences. I’ve learned about the creation of the National Security Council, and that of the position of National Security Advisor. 

I’ve learned about the negotiations that take place when appointing a cabinet, and how traditionally, people don’t publicly lobby for a specific job. I’ve learned and discovered and relearned and rediscovered the traditional way of doing things.

All of this because pundits and commentators have fallen over themselves to stress that the traditional way of doing things is most definitely not what President-elect Trump is interested in.

Doing something merely ‘because that’s the way things are done’ is never a good reason for doing it. Doing it because it’s a time tested, sensible, rational way of doing things and that doing it another way causes problems all around? Yeah, that’s a better reason. 

In some ways, Trump is of course entirely traditional. He lied to his base in order to get elected for a start. That’s hardly groundbreaking in US politics. OK, the way he lied, the brazen nature and astonishing frequency of his lies may have been, but that he lied is not that unusual, let’s be fair. He’s appointed people to his team, either senior White House aides or cabinet nominees people

• he owes favours to, or 
• he thinks – for whatever reason – can do the job, or 
• entirely traditional right wing

What’s struck me – and others – is how many of the appointees/nominees are or have been correspondents or pundits or have presented shows on Fox News. At least two nominees for cabinet secretaries, his pick for deputy national Security Advisor and others. It’s the Fox Newsification of the Executive Branch.

My friend Mitch Benn years ago said that instead of Fox News being the public arm of the republican Party (as had been the case for years),the Republican Party slowly became the political arm of Fox News.

And now you see the relevance of the quite at the start of this piece:

Ever since armies had been embedded with news organisation rather than the reverse, the reporters had been waiting for the first attempted coup.

Fox News has been embedded within the Republican Party for more than two decades; a little over ten year ago, the Republicans in Congress became actually, if not formally, embedded within Fox News. And now it looks like so is the Presidency.

I wonder when the first coup will occur.

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See you tomorrow, with something else. 

This post is part of a series of blog entries, counting down to 1st January 2017. You can see other posts in the run by clicking here.