There he was again, this time on 60 Minutes last night – Republican strategist, pollster and CBS News consultant Frank Luntz, bemoaning all the anger and polarization and hatred in the current presidential campaign and what it’s doing to American democracy.
CBS paid Luntz to pull together a focus group featuring a cross-section of Americans so we can all see how angry they are. Then he professed to be shocked – shocked – at the extent of the anger and his inability even to keep the group under control.
All of it was an exercise in hypocrisy. As I’ve noted before, Luntz was instrumental in creating the climate he now claims to deplore.
The entire 60 Minutes segment was an exercise in false equivalence – all that handwringing about how this campaign and politics in general had deteriorated.
But that assumes that the candidate who is not a racist, and not a misogynist; the candidate who is not endorsed by the KKK, did not propose a religious test for admission to the United States, did not insult a Gold Star family, did not promote anti-Semitic imagery, did not mock a reporter for his physical disability, did not call Mexicans rapists, did not brag about sexual assault, did not avoid paying federal income taxes, did not get sued for housing discrimination, did not cheat laborers, etc. etc. etc. somehow is just as responsible for the current state of our politics as the candidate who is all of those things and did all of those things.
Perhaps that’s all we should expect from today’s CBS News, a news organization that imported its own president, David Rhodes, direct from Fox News.
But it’s not just these two candidates to whom false equivalence should not be applied. Take a look at the graphic in this New York Times story concerning which national politicians have been most prone to lie from 2007 through 2015. It seems you can predict the likelihood that national political figures will lie based on party affiliation.
As for civility, let’s look back further. Almost every major event that has led to a decline in civility, fair play and honest discourse in American politics for more than 40 years has been brought to us by Republicans. There was Watergate, of course. But also Lee Atwater, and hate Radio – Rush Limbaugh, et. al. - and Matt Drudge, and Fox News, and Breitbart, and Glenn Beck. Every time American politics has been dragged down a notch in recent decades, Republicans have been the ones doing the dragging.
And there was Frank Luntz. Luntz helped inflict upon the national scene the proto-Trump: Newt Gingrich. According to McClatchy News Service:
In 1996, Gingrich, with the help of political consultant/pollster Frank Luntz, issued a memo to Republican candidates through the GOP political action committee offering tips on how to "speak like Newt."
The memo offered some of Gingrich's favorite words and phrases to describe opponents: "radical," "bizarre," "sick," "pathetic," "corrupt," "cheat," and "anti" — as in anti-flag, anti-family, anti-child or anti-jobs.
But perhaps the best exploration of Luntz and his methods came from Samantha Bee in this 2005 Daily Show report:
So, Dr. FrankenLuntz, spare us the crocodile tears now that the monster you helped create is beyond your control.