BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON
“Lawmakers pick from platters of bread and deli meat, cheese, and olives and wash down their meals with cold cans of Cherry Coke, the group’s soda of choice.”
National Journal reporter Tim Alberta’s description of a House Liberty Caucus buffet caught my eye because it suggested that Alberta was actually in the meeting. How else could he have known with such certainty that the Coke was cold. I know. I get the Sherlock Holmes comparison all the time.
The Liberty Caucus is a relatively new and apparently more aggressive subdivision of the conservative Republican Study Committee. Alberta’s presence at a Caucus gathering would be unusual. As he describes it, the meetings are “secretive” because the members picking away at the deli meat are also plotting the overthrow of House Speaker John Boehner and depose Majority Leader Eric Cantor, too, or force him to agree to put one or more of their own in the ranks of Republican Leadership. That’s not normally the type of strategy session you would invite the media to, or even discuss with the media at all.
Alberta has written about the Liberty Caucus at least twice, but never tells us whether he attends Caucus meetings, or, if not, who is feeding him information. He leaves a lot of doubt about the authenticity and accuracy of the information he imparts and makes you wonder whether he is just telling the story or is part of it.
Much of it is unattributed or drawn from anonymous sources. The actual number of plotters and schemers varies pretty dramatically. There could be as few as six to 12, or as many as “several dozen” at the core of the plot, and as many as 40-50 who have made a verbal commitment to the insurrection. Question: Why does that latter whip count vary by as much as 10? If you have specific verbal commitments, shouldn’t you have an exact number?
The news media is just saturated with this kind of trendy, melodramatic coverage of the political far right and the new celebrities who are jockeying for center stage.
The media really need to get a grip. It is great theater, the bombastic bluster of Ted Cruz, the coverage of juvenile “electile dysfunction” campaign ads, and the constant threats to the leadership and other elected officeholders who don’t adhere to the rigid, doctrinaire agenda.
There is news worth reporting, for sure. The right wing has left some scars on the body politic. The brinkmanship has debilitated Congress and prevented its members from doing what they were sent to Washington to do—govern. The government was shut down for 14 days.
The problem is there is little context for it. There is no perspective and little balance or enlightenment. There is too much of it. The coverage needs to be brought back into focus. It needs what photographers call depth of field.
What we’re getting now is the confusion of journalism and literature, a mix of news and entertainment that each day becomes more entertainment and less news. It distorts political realities and paints for the citizenry perceptions that are far more Picasso than Pissaro. It just ads to governmental dysfunction, partisan division, incivility and worst of all, perpetuates the huge lapse in the information and knowledge citizens so desperately need to self-govern.
Look at Alberta’s melodramatic language used in describing the Liberty Caucus, “quietly launched last year with five or six lawmakers attending a hastily choreographed meeting…“staff members are not permitted, giving the gathering an intimate-and even secretive-feel.”
”Several dozen frustrated House conservatives” are doing the scheming, and “they say between 40 and 50 members have already committed verbally to electing a new speaker.” The “masterminds of this mutiny are trying to stay in the shadows for as long as possible to avoid putting a target on their backs,” but the “nucleus of the rebellion can be found inside the House Liberty Caucus.”
“The conservatives’ exasperation with leadership is well known,” Alberta went on. “And now, in discreet dinners at the Capitol Hill Club and in winding, hypothetical-laced email chains, they’re trying to figure out what to do about it.”
Schemes, plots, anger, and exasperation. Secrecy, intimacy and hiding in the shadows, discreet dining, masterminds and mutiny, organic policy solutions and audacious options, the nucleus, the core, the rebellion, and, of all things, winding, hypothetical-laced email chains. I think winding, hypothetical-laced email chains are a violation of House Rules. I’ll have to ask Billy Pitts. I know they violate the Queen’s English. You have to wonder how such drivel gets passed the editor’s desk.
The hype is intended to make you think you’ve learned something, when you’ve learned nothing, to make a little bit of information seem like a lot. Alberta does name names, but only a small few, and most of those he names are already well-known Boehner antagonists, Justin Amish of Michigan, Raul Labrador of Idaho, Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Mark Meadows of North Carolina, Tom Graves of Georgia, Matt Salmon of Arizona, Louis Gohmert of Texas, Tim Huelskamp of Kansas and Jim Jordan of Ohio. He does not say they are even among the 50, or maybe 40, who have verbally committed something to someone.
All of this was published in the National Journal, once the publication that so many in Washington went to first for accuracy and in-depth coverage. This new stuff is sensational and sophomoric. Finally, the writing style, suffering from adjectival overload, is what you associate with supermarket tabloids. The headline was worse than the writing: House Conservatives Plot to Oust Boehner, Put Scare Into Cantor. One plan: Force the speaker to step aside before the new year.”
That was almost as overboard as this gem in Politico Magazine: “We’re Coming for You, John Boehner.” That headline promised a long in-depth story about more plotting against the Speaker. Instead it was just another book promotion, an excerpt from a new book written by Richard Viguerie, a veteran libertarian activist who made a career, I assume lucrative, out of marketing direct mail fundraising on the right. The excerpt was Vigeurie’s selective memory of the last six decades of conservative politics, much of which trumpeted his business success. It was written in classic direct mail messaging. He referenced anger six times and ridiculed establishment Republicans 10. But Boehner was mentioned only twice and never in reference to getting rid of him.
National Journal, don’t look now, but Politico is crowding your space.
Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.