A NEWSLETTER FROM DAVID CORN |
A NEWSLETTER FROM DAVID CORN |
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Should There Be a Presidential Debate? |
By David Corn April 16, 2024 |
Joe Biden and Donald Trump at the final debate of the 2020 presidential campaign in Nashville, Tennessee. Yuri Gripas/AP |
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On Sunday, a group of news outlets issued a joint statement calling on “the presumptive presidential nominees” to “publicly commit to participating in general election debates before the November elections.” The full list of signers includes ABC News, the Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, C-SPAN, Fox News, NBC News, NewsNation, Univision Network News, NPR, PBS Newshour, and USA Today. “General election debates have a rich tradition in our American democracy,” these outfits noted. Though it is too early to make plans—neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden have been officially nominated by their parties—the letter urged them to “state their support” for fall debates.
“If there is one thing Americans can agree on during this polarized time,” they wrote, “it is that the stakes of this election are exceptionally high. Amid that backdrop, there is simply no substitute for the candidates debating with each other, and before the American people, their visions for the future of our nation.” Let me respectfully disagree—kind of.
Not that I believe that there shouldn’t be one or more Biden-Trump debates after each party has its nominee. But there ought to be some hard thinking before we embrace the conventional line that debates are always good and should always be encouraged.
The issue, as you could guess, is Trump. He’s not a routine candidate. You know the drill. He did not respect the 2020 elections results, he schemed (perhaps criminally) to overturn them, and he incited insurrection to remain in power. He has called for suspending the Constitution so he could be restored to power. He has spewed vile rhetoric that has provoked comparisons to Hitler. Does this man deserve a platform provided by a nonpartisan establishment outfit like the Commission on Presidential Debates, which these media companies cite as the organization that should mount the face-offs? (The CPD has already—wishfully?—set dates for three presidential debates and one vice presidential match-up in September and October.)
An obvious retort is that whatever his past misdeeds, Trump, as the GOP candidate, ought to be granted a spot on the debate stage so voters can evaluate him fully. And, of course, a debate would allow voters to see Biden in action and judge him, as well. But perhaps we need to ponder whether a shouting match—with Trump doing much of the shouting—will benefit the national discourse. And does Trump, even if a major party nominee, deserve such legitimization? He swore an oath to defend the Constitution. He broke that vow. Republicans are free to keep him as their cult-god. Does that mean the rest of us have to accept that?
If I were advising Biden, I’d suggest that he think twice before accepting this invitation to pre-order a fall debate. There are many ways the campaign can proceed in the next few months, and Trump’s conduct, already outrageous, could become more extreme. Biden would be justified to say, “Let’s see how it goes.” Of course, if Biden doesn’t promise to participate, Trump and others will call him yellow. Yet there’s an old saying I learned from my father: Never get in a fight with a skunk. You both end up stinking. But the skunk likes it.
Certainly, for Trump there ought to be new rules. Real-time fact-checkers should be part of any debate, as well as a microphone cutoff to prevent rants. The organizers and moderators need to be willing to punish anyone who violates the rules. Trump should not be allowed to hijack the event. And though Trump has said he would debate Biden anytime and anywhere—and his campaign has called on the CPD to schedule earlier debates—I wonder if he would agree to a debate with strict protocols that might impede his effort to transform the event into a circus.
Then there’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Would this purveyor of vaccine disinformation and assorted conspiracy theories be included? The CPD has established criteria for its prospective debates. These include the candidate appearing on enough state ballots to have a mathematical chance of securing the 270 Electoral College votes needed for a win and reaching at least 15 percent in the polls. Could Kennedy hit these marks? It’s possible. (This year, his polling average has been a slight bit north of 10 percent.) If Kennedy qualified, would it be in Biden’s interest to appear on a stage with two crackpots, each taking potshots at him?
Democracy depends on debate—reasonable and productive debate. Can that occur with Trump? Moreover, does inviting Trump normalize a demagogue and wannabe-autocrat who tried to subvert the republic and betrayed the nation on January 6—and who continues to pose a threat to American democracy? It’s easy to be rah-rah for debates, and inclusion, at first glance, may appear to be the fair and honorable path. But Trump has so perverted the nation’s politics that what should be a no-brainer deserves greater deliberation.
Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com. |
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The Watch, Read, and Listen List
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Patriots. British playwright Peter Morgan is a master of exploring one-on-one relationships in pursuit of understanding the exercise of state power. With Frost/Nixon, he used journalist David Frost’s interview of former (and disgraced) President Richard Nixon to plumb the depths of Tricky Dick’s tormented and twisted psyche. In his “Blair Trilogy”—three plays about Prime Minister Tony Blair’s interactions, respectively, with George W. Bush, Queen Elizabeth II, and Bill Clinton—Morgan deftly used intimate moments between world leaders to ponder the all-too-human foibles of statecraft. His specialty has been to turn real-life drama into onstage (or onscreen) drama that helps us think about the people who shape our world and, thus, our lives. Oh, yes, he also was the creator and showrunner for The Crown and wrote the screenplays for Bohemian Rhapsody, the Freddie Mercury biopic; Rush, the brilliant 2013 Ron Howard film about Formula 1 drivers; and other high-class films.
So it was with much anticipation last week that I entered the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York City to see a preview of Morgan’s latest play, Patriots, whose recent staging in London was well received. As with his previous work, this play zeroes in on the relationship between two consequential players: this time, Boris Berezovsky, a rising Russian oligarch, and Vladimir Putin, at first merely a deputy mayor in St. Petersburg. The story starts in the early 1990s. Russia, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is a Wild West where a new breed of gangster capitalists plunder its resources, with the help of government officials no longer tethered to ideology or party loyalty. Berezovsky, who’s grabbing as much as he can, reaches out to government bureaucrat Putin for assistance in nabbing a key location in downtown St. Petersburg for a luxury car dealership. Putin declines to pocket the offered bribe, but the two Russians forge a bond, and in the subsequent years, Berezovsky uses his influence to place Putin in positions of influence in Moscow. And the rest, they say, is history—and tragedy.
When Putin gains ultimate power, he implements repressive measures and places the oligarchs under his thumb. Berezovksy, who cannot accept that the fellow who he views as his own creation is now in charge, refuses to bend the knee. The result: He must bolt Russia, ahead of an arrest, and sets up shop as an exile in London, now fancying himself a champion of freedom and democracy and the leader of a Putin opposition that doesn’t truly exist. I’m not spoiling anything because Patriots is about what happened, and it follows the arc of what’s known. I can’t attest to the accuracy of every detail, but Morgan’s fact-checking is not the point. He aims to reveal the behind-the scenes truth, even if that requires more imagination than historical dictation.
What’s most interesting about this production is that Morgan fails to turn the Berezovsky-Putin relationship into an illumination of anything larger than the most obvious themes: A hubristic oligarch created a monster to serve his own greed, and then the monster devoured him (and their country). There are no surprises. There are no dramatic moments of decision. Michael Stuhlbarg, an actor well known for delivering intense performances (see him in the marvelous television series Your Honor), plays Berezovsky in bombastic manner, and Will Keen predictably does Putin in steely fashion. Between the two there’s not much below the surface.
The intimacy of Morgan’s previous one-on-one dramas is absent, replaced by a wider chronological sweep and a glitzy production, neither of which affords us momentous insights. The most intriguing moment comes when Berezovsky, in exile, argues with fellow oligarch and onetime business partner Roman Abramovich (pal of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner—though they are not mentioned in Patriots), and Abramovich tries to persuade Berezovsky to play ball with Putin, asserting that once Putin has established greater order within Russia he will ease up on the repression, and Russia will move toward democracy. It’s better to work with Putin, he contends. Does Abramovich believe this? Or is it a justification so he can keep his billions?
In The Crown and his plays, Morgan deftly infiltrated England’s elite and showed us the seams of British society. With Patriots, he is a stranger in a strange land. If we’re looking for a better understanding of Putin, the tyrannical war criminal who now threatens global security, Morgan falls short. At the end of the play, Putin is nine years from his brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine. What we’ve learned is that Berezovsky was a greedy fool and Putin was an ambitious and power-hungry thug from the start. A good Russian drama usually has more to it than that.
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Beckham. The best memoirs are the ones in which the author can separate himself or herself from the subject and write about that person with detachment. (One of the best autobiographies in that regard that I’ve read was Steve Martin’s Born Standing Up.) Though Beckham, the recent Netflix documentary on British football megastar David Beckham, is technically not a memoir, the film, made with the cooperation of Beckham and his wife, Victoria Beckham (a.k.a. Posh Spice), functions a bit as a memoir because it so heavily features the Beckhams observing their collective past, and it succeeds because throughout the four episodes it feels as if they each are commenting upon people quite different from the people they are now.
Beckham is superbly directed by Fisher Stevens, a veteran actor and director. (He played sleazy PR man Hugo Baker in Succession.) This documentary is utterly fascinating and engrossing—whether you give a whit about soccer or not. Beckham’s tale is that of a son of a man obsessed with the sport, who, in turn, as a child became obsessed with the sport. When an adolescent, he was tapped by the manager of Manchester United as a future phenom and became such. Not just for his extraordinary skills on the pitch. Rakishly good-looking—ready-made for modeling and brand endorsements—he was the first global celebrity superstar of the sport, a status bolstered by his romance and consequent marriage to a Spice Girl. The pair were tabloid gold. In England and beyond, they were royalty. Which means they were endlessly chased and constantly dissected by paparazzi and the media.
And there was plenty of material for Fleet Street. Beckham’s career was full of heroic exploits and pitfalls. He led Manchester United to glorious victories. Yet he was widely blamed for England’s loss in the 1998 World Cup for drawing a red card (that was undeserved) and vilified in his homeland. But in every good sports doc, there’s a comeback, and Beckham (with his wife’s support) kept playing hard, and four years later was captain of the national team. Yet controversy and scandal continued. He had an all-too-public falling out with Man United, and he and Victoria faced a personal crisis when Beckham was accused of extramarital affairs while playing in Spain for Real Madrid. Yet they got through it. They got through everything. Beckham is as much an exploration of celebrity as it is of modern sports and this one exceptional athlete. If you want to know what life feels like for a super-wealthy superstar, this documentary puts you there.
Stevens smartly examines what made Beckham such an accomplished and thrilling player and what caused the Posh-Becks marriage to work. Beckham comes across as thoughtful eyewitness to the crazy tale of his own life—though several events and decisions in the saga remain a mystery, apparently even to him. In Ted Lasso, one of the team’s strikers is fond of exclaiming, “Football is life.” In Beckham, Stevens presents a cultural history that goes far beyond the beautiful game.
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Read Recent Issues of Our Land |
April 13, 2024: Sleepwalking toward the 2024 election; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Woody Johnson); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
April 9, 2024: A special Our Land report: Everything you wanted to know about Trump’s porn-star-hush-money case; and more.
April 6, 2024: The best political video of 2024 (so far); the tragedy and absurdity of the World Central Kitchen bombing in Gaza; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Dawn Staley): the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
April 2, 2024: Trump Bibles and other stunts—the absurdity of now; The Freaks Came Out to Write joyously chronicles the Village Voice; Lost Ox’s “Ripsaw Review”; and more.
March 30, 2024: Accountability time for Trump’s henchmen; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Robert Kennedy Jr. and Nicole Shanahan); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
March 26, 2024: Donald Trump and the United States of Amnesia; No Labels, RIP?; Bad River’s inspiring ride; “Tennessee Rise” lifts up a Senate campaign; and more.
March 23, 2024: Trump Normalization Syndrome—a threat to the USA; the most important 1 percent in 2024; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Ari Fleischer); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
March 19, 2024: It’s time to start worrying about Christian nationalism; Constellation is lost in space…and time; the wonderful musical party Karl Wallinger left behind; and more.
March 16, 2024: Time to unleash Kamala Harris to trigger Trump; Our Land needs you; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Dwight D. Opperman Foundation); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
March 12, 2024: Jared Kushner and the award that’s not good for the Jews; old cops versus new cops in Criminal Record; James Grady delivers a different mystery with The Smoke in Your Eyes; and more.
March 9, 2024: Trump’s back on top, and this is not fine; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Mark Robinson); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more. |
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Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com. |
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