A DISTANT LAND: Whitaker asked, and so did Baier!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2024

The obvious question not answered: With apologies, we're going to quote sacred Thoreau one more time. Once again, we refer to his longing to be transported to a type of distant land:

Walden; or, Life in the Woods

[...]

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. 

Our former Middlesex County neighbor longed for a world in which writers would offer sincere accounts of their lives. If some writer had lived sincerely, he said, "it must have been in a distant land to me."

What did our former neighbor mean? As we noted in Monday's report, we assume he meant something like this:

Inevitably, he lives of others differ from our own, and do so to a large degree. ("Planet is dissimilar from planet," Yevtushenko said.) Someone who has live sincerely and is speaking sincerely will inevitably seem to be describing "somewhere I have never traveled"—a land distant from any land Thoreau had personally known.

We'll offer a twist on that longing. For ourselves, we'd love to see a public discourse in which professional journalists offered competent accounts of the public world in which we citizens live. 

But alas! In the wake of Wednesday's performance by Bret Baier—after watching snatches of "cable news" last night, Red and Blue alike—it must be said that any such world would be a far distant land.

We Americans! We pretend that we are blessed with something resembling a "national discourse." We pretend we have something known as journalism, performed by respectable people who often "went to the finest schools."

In truth, some of the performers in question are obvious lost souls. Astonishingly, they live to go on the air in prime time each night and talk about who may be "banging" Jill Biden. They long to go on the air to compare Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg to a pair of "hippos." 

(Tuesday night's Gutfeld! program. This is an endless theme on this demented primetime "cable news" program as Blue America averts its gaze.)

Some of our "journalists" are lost souls. Remarkably few of the people in question are impressively competent. 

As we noted yesterday, at least one of the people apparently lives in a $37 million Palm Beach mansion. On Wednesday evening, on the Fox News Channel, this peculiar state of affairs seemed to be present for all to see in Bret Baier's gruesome work.

As we noted yesterday, Baier spent the second half hour on Wednesday night attempting to justify the various things he'd said and done during the first half hour. A trio of Fox News Channel hacks assured him that he had been great.

Yesterday, Baier claimed that he'd made a mistake in one part of his "interview" with Candidate Harris. We know of no obvious reason to believe what Baier said.

It's going to be a long, long time before we imagine that Baier is sincere. That said, he asked some perfectly sensible questions during the course of that gruesome half hour—and thanks to the invaluable Rev site, a transcript of the interview now exists. 

(For that transcript, accompanied by videotape, you can just click here.)

One of Baier's questions is shown below. It came right at the one-minute mark, during the flood of interruptions with which Baier chose to begin.

You might call it a "loaded," rather partisan question. You might see it as an accusatory question designed to put the candidate in an awkward position. 

We don't recommend the shape of this question. But it touches upon one of the largest (unanswered) policy questions of the current White House campaign:

BAIER (10/16/24): When you came into office, your administration immediately reversed a number of Trump border policies, most significantly, the policy that required illegal immigrants to be detained through deportation either in the U.S. or in Mexico. And you switched that policy—they were released from custody awaiting trial. 

So instead—included in those were a large number of single men, adult men who went on to commit heinous crimes. So looking back, do you regret the decision to terminate "remain in Mexico" at the beginning of your administration?

Given the reference to heinous crimes, you might call that a "loaded" question. On the other hand, those heinous crimes really were committed, and Baier was asking a form of this extremely basic policy question:

What explains U.S. policy with respect to the southern border during the Biden Administration's first three-plus years?

Especially for those who watch Fox News, that's an extremely basic policy question—a question which lies at the heart of the current presidential campaign. On the other hand:

For people who watch CNN or MSNBC, that whole topic has largely been disappeared in the past few years. Nothing to look at, such viewers have essentially been told.

So it goes in a nation of silos! But what explains the border policies of President Biden's first three-plus year? Nine days earlier, on 60 Minutes, Bill Whitaker had asked that same question a bit more directly when he interviewed Candidate Harris. 

In fact, as we noted in real time, he asked it three separate times:

WHITAKER (10/7/24): You recently visited the southern border and embraced President Biden's recent crackdown on asylum seekers. And that crackdown produced an almost immediate and dramatic decrease in the number of border crossings. If that's the right answer now, why didn't your administration take those steps in 2021?

WHITAKER: I've been covering the border for years, and so I know this is not a problem that started with your administration. But there was an historic flood of undocumented immigrants coming across the border the first three years of your administration. As a matter of fact, arrivals quadrupled from the last year of President Trump. Was it a mistake to loosen the immigration policies as much as you did?

WHITAKER: What I was asking was, was it a mistake to kind of allow that flood to happen in the first place?

Was it a mistake to adopt those border policies? Whitaker asked three times.

Why did he ask three separate times? As we noted in real time, he asked the question three separate times because Candidate Harris kept refusing to answer the question. She kept changing the subject, speaking instead about the bipartisan border bill which appeared earlier this year.

That's an important topic too, but it isn't what Whitaker had asked her about. After her third refusal to answer, the CBS newsman moved on.

On Wednesday night, at the one-minute mark, Baier began to ask the same question in a more confrontational way. In our view, Whitaker's presentation was more professional on a journalistic basis. But Baier was asking an obvious question—and once again, Candidate Harris kept evading the thrust of the question.

As we watched on Wednesday night, we were disappointed by that evasion, bordering on dismayed. This has been, and remains, a very important issue within this campaign—and the candidate for whom we'll be voting just kept evading the question, first when Whitaker asked, then when Baier followed suit.

As with Whitaker, so too here—Baier asked several times. There was an obvious partisan edge to some of the ways he framed the question, but he asked it again and again.

Here he is, returning to this general question at the four-minute mark:

BAIER: Back to the original premise. Jocelyn Nungaray, Rachel Morin, Laken Riley, they are young women who were brutally assaulted and killed by some of the men who were released at the beginning of the administration, well before a negotiated bipartisan bill [in 2024]. ...This is a specific policy decision by your administration to release these men into the country. So what I’m saying to you, do you owe those families an apology?

You might even call that a "hostile" question. On the other hand, it involves a blindingly obvious policy question:

Why did the Biden Administration maintain those permissive border policies over the first three-plus years? And was that a mistake?

Baier kept asking variants of that question; the candidate kept failing to answer. At the seven-minute mark, Baier framed the question as shown:

BAIER: During that time, you said repeatedly that the border was secure. When in your mind did it start becoming a crisis?

Oof! That involves an awkward part of the candidate's record as vice president. Once again, Baier received a non-answer answer—at which point, he made one last attempt:

BAIER: There were 90-plus executive orders that were rescinded in the first days. Many of those were Trump border policies. 

I’m not going to stay here [on this topic] because there’s other things to talk about. But you frequently talked to the Border Patrol Union for support of that bipartisan bill and they did. They supported it, but they also just endorsed Donald Trump and said you’ve been “a failure with border security.” Why do you think they said that?

That was a form of that same question. Again, the candidate failed to offer a direct answer of some kind. As with Whitaker, so too here. The candidate failed to speak to a blindingly obvious set of policy questions:

What explains the border policies of the first three-plus years? Why didn't President Biden take the actions he recently took at some earlier point? Was that a mistake?

Full and complete disclosure:

When such questions are asked, Candidate Harris is being asked about a set of major policy decisions made by someone else!

There was no such official as President Harris during the past four years. These decisions belong to President Biden, not to the vice president who served in his administration.

For all we know, it's even possible that Vice President Harris argued against those policy decisions. To the best of our knowledge, there's no way to know at this time, one way or the other.

That said:

First by Whitaker, then by Baier, the candidate was asked about a set of major policy decisions. As things turned out, have those decisions turned out to be a mistake?

She kept refusing to answer. Because we're hoping that she'll win this election, we were dismayed when she did.

In fairness, the candidate is in an awkward position here. Given the way our politics works, it's always difficult for a sitting vice president to oppose the sitting president's policy decisions, even when the sitting vice president is running to replace that president.

(See Vice President/Candidate Hubert Humphrey, running to replace President Lyndon Johnson as Vietnam continued to rage in 1968. Humphrey finally broke with Johnson on Vietnam—and, by standard reckonings, this came just a bit too late.)

In fairness, Harris is in a difficult spot with respect to this policy question. On the other hand, it's a blindingly obvious question, one which is playing a major role in the current campaign.

It's a very basic question. On Wednesday night, the candidate still didn't seem to have a good way of responding.

We were dismayed as Baier's loaded questions went unanswered. We were dismayed because we're going to vote for Candidate Harris and because we hope she'll win. 

That said:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But our "national discourse" barely exists at the present time.

On Red America's cable news channel, policy at the southern border has been a major point of concern over the past four years. On Blue America's cable news channels, millionaire hosts have long averted their gaze.

Nothing to look at, our own tribe's cable news channels have said. And in the wake of Wednesday's event, Blue America's cable news has largely disappeared this substantial part of the Baier-Harris exchange.

Sad! In this area of concern, Red America's cable news hacks have actually been more on target than Blue America's counterparts. That said:

If a fulsome discourse exists somewhere, it exists in a far distant land from here. 

Within what's left of our national discourse, we Americans currently live inside two giant silos. In Blue America, we're largely been told, for the past four years, that this topic doesn't exists. If Candidate Harris fails to win, this will be one of the major ways that former president Donald J. Trump ends up in the Oval again.

In our view, Baier's performance was egregious on Wednesday night. As we've told you in the past:

You can't run a middle-class democracy with a multimillionaire press corps. It simply can't be done.

We thought Baier's behavior was egregious, inexcusable, baldly partisan in tone. On the other hand, he kept asking a very basic question, just like Whitaker did.

Tomorrow: What explains what President Biden did? Our own (completely speculative) semi-theory about this puzzling question