It’s my job to be a news junkie and follow politics and policy from Washington. But it’s my avocation as well, covering “the art of power,” as Nancy Pelosi titled her recent book, and the drama of American democracy. Sometimes the politicians rise to the occasion, many times not, Donald Trump never. In any case, there’s plenty to write about.
This past week, however, life intruded in ways welcome and otherwise, and the world of politics had to take a back seat — even though the country is careening in just five weeks toward the most consequential presidential election in memory. Yet the silver lining is this: Experiencing life without obsessing about politics and government, I saw the latest developments more like a lot of other Americans — perfunctorily or not at all.
Opinion Columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
It’s good to be reminded that others aren’t so steeped in the stuff, that Americans’ news consumption is often cursory and they go with their gut as often as their head in forming opinions and making choices at the polls. And in the end we each get just one ballot — Trump’s and MAGA Republicans’ conspiracist claims notwithstanding.
For me, the first distraction was a most welcome one: My younger daughter got married. The long weekend was perfect. Abandoning myself to family and to mother-of-the-bride bliss, I had no time or inclination to read or watch the news, other than a glance at my smart watch when it jangled about some bulletin, easily ignored.
Life being cruel as well as kind, the second distraction was sorrowful: Just as I was packing for the wedding in Chicago, longtime friend and former Wall Street Journal colleague Neil King Jr. succumbed to cancer. That man knew how to live — in remission, Neil had hiked from Washington to New York City, and then wrote an engrossing memoir of his “American Ramble.” And in the end he modeled how to die as well. Weeks earlier, amid last-chance treatments, he was trying to organize an outing to a Washington Nationals game for a few of us.
The morning after returning from Chicago, I was at Neil’s funeral Mass on Capitol Hill, with my joy hangover. Then the joint eulogy by Neil’s two daughters turned my previous days’ happy tears to the other kind. Afterward, among journalist friends and politicos, none of us talked about Trump, Kamala Harris, Congress’ budget votes or new polls.
All told, I spent nearly a week riding a personal roller coaster, ignoring newspapers, websites and cable TV. What did I “miss”? Variations on familiar themes. And in some ways, not being glued to the news makes what’s significant stand out.
There was the CNN bombshell that threatens the Republican Party’s ticket, including Trump, in must-win North Carolina. The already beleaguered candidate for governor there, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, reportedly has a history of bigoted and prurient posts on social media, once calling himself a “black NAZI” and a “perv” on a porn site, and endorsing slavery. (“I would certainly buy a few,” he quipped obscenely.) Robinson denied the allegations, but Trump ghosted him anyway, even as the Harris campaign, in video ads, reminded voters that the former president had not only endorsed Robinson, but praised him as “Martin Luther King on steroids.”
As I was attending the wedding rehearsal, Ohio’s MAGA Senate candidate, Bernie Moreno, uttered what could well be the gaffe of the election season (which is saying something), perhaps ensuring Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown’s well-deserved reelection. Moreno, at a town hall, expressed bewilderment that suburban women are so upset about losing abortion rights, especially women past 50. “I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you,’” he quipped. Ha, ha. It’s a selfish, ignorant man who doesn’t get that we’re concerned for the rights of our daughters, nieces, younger acquaintances and millions more women we’ll never meet.
Meanwhile, Trump and running mate Sen. JD Vance of Ohio continued to perpetuate their racist lies about pet-eating Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, which in turn perpetuates right-wing hate and threats aimed at Vance’s constituents. I’d naively thought they’d drop the hateful nativist schtick. That they won’t is a lesson, as if voters needed one: There is no bottom to their vitriol.
Abroad, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu began what now seems to be the long-feared expansion of war in the Mideast, further elevating the issue of U.S. support for Israel in the presidential race. That could bode ill for Democrats in battleground Michigan, with its sizable Arab American population.
Oh, and new election polls came out, still showing a too-close-to-call race between Trump and Harris. Nothing new there.
See, I’ve caught up. I’m back to mainlining news and politics all day, every day. At the same time, I’m more aware that most other people are not so addicted; they’re focused as they should be on their livelihoods and families, and the triumphs, tragedies and tedium of the circle of life. And that’s a good thing for a political journalist to appreciate.