Biden up, Carlson down: roll on 2024
If only Joe Biden’s knees and back worked as well as his media.
The video to launch his bid for re-election in 2024 was a work of art. They usually are, of course, but there was something a bit special about this latest iteration of the Official Campaign Video. It had all the tricks – the butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth Early Learning Centre font, the upbeat music that usually introduces a dietary supplement, and the rapidly flashing images that will either induce a state of hysteria or hypnosis. There were also lots of pictures of Biden with Vice President Harris, which settled any doubts on that score too. George Clooney can step down for another election cycle. The country doesn’t need him.
Yet there was something else we didn’t see too much in 2020, and that was a genuine sense of belief. Biden and his team think they’re going to do it and, thus far, one would be foolish to bet against them.
Cut through all the partisan nonsense from both sides and try to engage with the reality of the past four years. Biden has a lot to celebrate. He’s passed stimulus packages, capped drug prices, cancelled a lot of student debt, got to grips with unemployment, navigated through an inflationary cycle that risked turning into a full-blown recession, withdrawn the US from Afghanistan (albeit somewhat messily), taken out al-Zawahiri, recommitted to NATO, steered a course of sensible engagement and support with Ukraine, as well as many other policies around gun violence, women’s rights, care for the elderly, and the environment.
Frame it however you will but Biden goes into 2024 with hard policy successes behind him. No longer will he have to compete with the narrative that he can’t do the job. He’s been doing the job, in a more understated way than the previous two occupants of the Oval Office, but that’s Biden’s style.
What was missing from the video, of course, was all the creaking as Biden shuffles along on his arthritic joints. There was none of Biden ignoring the autocue to engage in some reckless ad-libbing, which often has all the grace of a man wrestling an alligator. Yet why would they include too much of Ordinary Joe? Biden has become almost totemic, a figurehead of Democratic governance. And therein lies the GOP’s main problem.
Age is Biden’s weakest point but even that is negated somewhat if the Democrats can continue to sell him as a symbol of steady, reliable, somewhat boring government. It leaves the GOP struggling to find something to say, which is why it was perhaps appropriate that the Republicans responded with an attack ad notable for it being the first created using AI.
A few things to say about the ad. It was poorly constructed and banal in its choices, yet it was rolled out very quickly, all of which says a lot about the current state of AI. Hot button issues were superimposed on images that made it hard to read when the text fell on brightly lit parts of the scene. A few of the images of Biden and Harris were AI-generated, placing them deep in Uncanny Valley, all wild, out of control, unruly teeth and leering eyeballs.
Yet as bad as the ad was, the contrast with the Democrats’ ad itself made a telling point about the two strategies. Democrats will preach stability. They will attack the Republican position on abortion, book bans, as well as the war with Disney over gay rights in Florida. Republicans, meanwhile, will attempt to swamp the airwaves with narratives largely imagined, hugely disruptive, and quite possibly effective. One can see how AI increases the effectiveness of the Trumpian playbook. AI can make noise, lots of it, incessantly.
Whether that noise gets onto the networks will come down to how much the media is willing to repeat those attack lines. Last week, we wondered if the Dominion settlement meant that Fox News would try to pull back from its more extreme positions. This week, Tucker Carlson got the boot from the channel. Not surprising, say some. This indicates that Fox is going to moderate its language.
Well, perhaps. But consider this. Tucker Carlson is not Sean Hannity. And it’s Hannity who has always been Trump’s greatest champion on Fox. Carlson was in some ways even more extreme. He engaged in some truly nasty politics during his tenure. As the most radical of the Fox News voices, he brought white supremacism into the mainstream with his advocacy for the so-called “Great Replacement” theory. Yet he was never a full-on Trumper. It’s said that he privately loathed Trump and, certainly, back when Covid was first raging, it was Carlson who highlighted the President’s failure to contain the virus. The loss of Carlson doesn’t necessarily tell us much about the channel’s relationship with Trump.
His departure might not even affect Trump, unless, of course, Carlson decided to run against him. That’s the elephant in the room right now, though it’s not a very big elephant. We’re talking about something small enough to warrant our paying the copyright to play Henry Mancini’s baby elephant walk. It seems rather late for Carlson to make a move for 2024. He’s also young enough to wait out another election cycle – let Trump burn himself out completely – plus, more significant of all, his departure appears to have been triggered by a case brought by a former Fox producer who accused Carlson of overseeing a toxic work environment. Messages uncovered during the Dominion case appear to back that up. Carlson has some work to do in repairing his reputation. Look out for him in 2028, when he’ll no doubt be running for the only job left in the world not being done by AI.
Follow David on Twitter: @DavidWaywell