BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON | MAR 4
“Wisconsin Gov. Walker Refuses to Answer Evolution Question”
February 11, 2015 headline over an Associated Press story on Governor Scott Walker’s trade mission to England.
The headline, of course, is inaccurate. Walker answered the question. He just didn’t answer it to the satisfaction of the AP. The reporter on the scene, Scott Bauer, wrote, more accurately, that Walker didn’t refuse to answer, but that he “refused to say whether he believes in the theory of evolution. Walker’s answer was: “That’s a question a politician shouldn’t be involved in one way or the other. So I’m going to leave that up to you.”
Not a great answer, but a legitimate one.
Bauer also reported that Walker “dodged” questions about foreign policy while he was in England trying to sell that sharp Wisconsin cheddar cheese to the Brits. Dodged is a strange description. What Walker did was leave foreign policy at the water’s edge, which is the noble, and regrettably, antiquated answer, especially for politicians running for President. It still is, or should be, bad form for them to criticize the US President while on foreign soil.
Walker also got peppered with questions recently about former New York Mayor Guiliani challenging President Barack Obama’s patriotism, and whether Walker thinks President Obama is a Christian.
All of those questions were variations of “gotcha” questions, GQ for short, asked in the practice of “gotcha” journalism, once confined to the tabloids, cable shows, and the Internet gadflies who now make a living impersonating journalists. Today journalism is an amalgamation of styles and standards. The lines of distinction have been blurred by stiff competition for market share and sustainable profits, and a consumer appetite for red meat, rather than fresh vegetables.
Gotcha questions are asked to ensnare the target into saying or doing something controversial. A good gotcha question leaves no room for the respondent, who they call the mark in the movies, to wiggle, to dodge, or deflect. A good GQ has a borderline rationality to it that entices the respondent into actually answering, rather than dismissing it entirely. For all but the most astute politicians, there’s just no way out.
The classic illustration goes like this:
“Senator, Smith how long have you been beating your wife?”
Senator: “Why that’s outrageous. I’ve never beat my wife!”
Headline on the first day: Smith Indignantly Denies Beating Wife
Headline on the second day: Questions Linger About Smith Beating Wife
Headline on the third day: Smith Tries to Quell Rumors About Beating Wife
Smith’s goose is cooked. That’s the extreme side of gotcha journalism. Some GQ’s are legitimate avenues to how a candidate thinks or what a candidate would do if elected, but even those questions could be asked in a more intelligent, less provocative and entrapping manner.
Clearly, Governor Walker, probably to his credit, doesn’t know how to answer gotchas.
Take the question: Do you think President Obama is a Christian?
The Governor could have said: “Well, the President says he’s a Christian. I’ll take his word for it.”
Walker could also have said: “But then as Charles C.W. Cooke reminded us in National Review recently, some of the most prominent atheists on the planet from the late philosopher Christopher Hitchens to entertainer Bill Maher have said the President is a fellow traveler, in Maher’s words, a ‘drop-dead atheist, absolutely.’ Who better to know than Maher? He contributed $1 million to Democratic coffers and surely knows Obama better than I. If I were to attempt to get inside the President’s head to search for the answer to that question, no doubt Maher would already be there, and slam the door on my fingers. Then, too, look at the President’s latest linguistic acrobatics regarding Islam, going so far as to criticize Christians for the Crusades. Is President Obama a Christian? What does that mean, anyway? Are he and Michelle on the registry at some Christian Church? Or does the question run deeper than that? Is President Obama a Christian? Exactly why should I answer that question? Do you think he’s a Christian. If you tell me he’s a Christian I’ll believe you. The press always tells the truth, right?”
The reporter will have long since gone to sleep or walked away.
You can answer gotcha questions with any number of prefabricated, Teflon coated, anesthetized gotcha answers all prepared in advance by trained professionals, avoiding the absurdity of the GQ entrapment, described well by Columnist Timothy Carney: “Think for a moment about the perversity of a political media obsessed with haranguing politicians into becoming better at dealing with the political media.”
And, if you don’t answer gotcha questions, Washington Post Dana Milbank will call you a spineless coward and unfit for office. Maybe that’s a good thing.
Walker would know all of this, of course, if only he was graduated from Yale, like Milbank, Ruth Marcus, and Howard Dean or some other Northeastern Ivy League institution like much of the rest of Washington’s political and media elite.
The entire US Supreme Court is Ivy League. So is President Obama. When you go Ivy League, as President Obama did, you don’t have to have experience governing, even if you want to run a $3 trillion behemoth of a bureaucracy in the most powerful country on earth, except for Russia, China, Germany, France, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Israel, Canada, and Mexico.
Walker didn’t go Ivy League. He didn’t even finish college. Gasp! Walker attended Marquette, a Catholic school. It’s west of the Alleghenies, no less, and according to folk lore, run by a bunch of grumpy old priests and brothers who come to class in coarse sackcloth. He quit in his senior year and went to work for the Red Cross. Dumb. Right?
We haven’t had a President without a degree since Harry S Truman and let’s face it, Harry was an accident, not exactly born to the Presidency like Ivy Leaguers Roosevelt and Kennedy.
Walker, though, is among 70 percent of the population who are also without college degrees. The academically unwashed are still a solid majority. And we, yes I am counted among them, are actually in pretty good company.
The list of non-graduates is pretty impressive: from George Washington, Patrick Henry, Abigail Adams, and Andrew Jackson through Hans Christian Anderson, Andrew Carnegie, Albert Einstein, James Fennimore Cooper, William Faulkner, J. Paul Getty, Henry Firestone, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Ford, Grover Cleveland, Winston Churchill, and Robert Frost, to Warren Buffet, Richard Branson, Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Walt Disney, and some great artists, Julie Andrews, Halle Barry, Irving Berlin, Samuel Clemens, Jane Austen, Clint Eastwood, Bruce Catton, Robert DeNiro, and my favorite, Billy Baldwin. I forgot astronauts John Glenn and Scott Carpenter, and journalists Eleanor Clift and John Chancellor. I got bored by the time I got to the K’s, but that is a common defect among college dropouts. No doubt Howard Dean finds them all just a bit inferior.
The capability to govern should never ever be judged on that basis. Governing has little to do with academic achievement, or for that matter, success in business or community organizing. One of our greatest presidents was an actor, after all.
Good governance does require experience, but it is more about intuition, character, courage, humility, innate intelligence, and a symbiotic relationship with people, with the human condition, the kind that produces judgment and insight most of us just don’t have.
We’ll see whether Walker qualifies. He’s leading the polls but at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. We never will get the true measure of the man, however, if he doesn’t master the art of saying nothing much more convincingly.
Candidates must give to the media-entertainment industrial complex what it demands. What it demands isn’t what’s real. Therefore, what candidates end up delivering isn’t real either. You know where that leaves the public. Gotcha!
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.