(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The New York Times headline, dated December 27, was clear: “Joe Biden Says He’d Defy Subpoena to Testify in Trump’s Senate Trial.”
The New York Times headline, above an Associated Press story, dated the next day, December 28, was fuzzier: “Biden Leaves it Unclear if He Would Honor Senate Subpoena.”
One day later, December 29, the New York Times headline reached a possibly final — but who can say? — conclusion after the meandering journey of the preceding days: “Joe Biden Says He Would Comply With a Senate Subpoena, Reversing Course.”
The road to the White House may be winding, but that’s a lot of swerving.
President Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear that he intends to keep smearing Biden, falsely alleging that the Democrat abused his power as vice president to insulate Biden’s son and his son’s Ukrainian employer from a criminal investigation. (That Trump still lacks a shred of evidence for this charge, months after deploying wide swaths of the executive branch to advance it, is strong indication that no evidence exists or ever will.) In addition to pressuring Ukraine to investigate Biden, with the intent of spritzing his smear with a vapor of legitimacy, Trump has publicly requested that China investigate Biden as well.
To beat these scurrilous attacks, the former vice president needs more than consistent headlines; he needs a steady strategy. So here’s the question for armchair political strategists: Which one of the three distinct positions announced in the headlines above offers Biden the best chance of defanging Trump?
Answer: None of the above.
Yes, it’s a trick question. But more than that, it’s a democratic crisis. Biden bungled his response both to the smear and to the question of whether he would testify about it under oath. (Democrats must contest Republicans while also buttressing the Trump-battered rule of law; a legitimate Senate subpoena must be obeyed.) Trouble is, there is rarely a good way to respond to such smears, because the advantage almost invariably rests with the liar.
Whoever wins the Democratic nomination in 2020 will face some version of Trump’s attacks — like “crooked” Hillary and “corrupt” Biden — and will confront a similar quandary about responding. Ignore the smear and it spreads unchallenged. Engage and you generate hot embers to be fanned by an eager news media, which can generally be counted on to ignore even the most blatant bad faith by one of the disputants.
The asymmetry between a Democratic Party largely seeking to preserve democratic norms and government accountability and a GOP increasingly devoted to accumulating and exercising white Christian conservative power free of traditional legal or ethical constraint has been apparent for years. Books have been published. Academic papers have been written. Essays have detailed the danger. Yet bothsidesism, the unwillingness of mainstream arbiters to differentiate fact from fantasy or good faith argument from deliberate deception, persists.
The failure is more pronounced, and more perilous, when it comes to Trump, whose mental plumbing has leaked bad faith over a lifetime of personal corruption. Almost seven decades after Senator Joseph McCarthy slashed through the tapestry of American political culture, varying the number of communist spies he claimed to have found in the State Department in accord with the trajectory of the sun or the severity of his hangover, here we are — once again flummoxed by a demagogue so contemptuous of truth that he can’t be bothered to keep his lies straight.
Biden, and whomever Trump attacks next, cannot count on the news media to hold Trump accountable. And the proliferation of right-wing propaganda ensures that every emerging fact-based consensus will be targeted for destruction. McCarthy, who lacked a White House balcony from which to rally the nation’s dark side, had fewer political resources at hand than Trump has now yet still managed to be a “galvanizer of mobs,” as Richard Rovere called him.
Democratic candidates will have to get used to defending themselves with a sufficiently strong counterpunch that it puts Trump on the defensive. David Doak, a former Democratic strategist (and my one-time partner) Tweeted that Biden should agree to testify under oath before the Senate impeachment trial — provided Trump does likewise.
Trump, who instinctively kicks “for the groin” as McCarthy once did (Rovere again), lacks the courage or character to survive a bout of sworn public testimony. He’ll never agree to it. But in an asymmetrical political environment, in which non-demagogues pay a truth tax, Doak’s suggestion is the kind of defensive/offensive combo that a Democrat will have to level against Trump. It entails risk. But it beats three days of rhetorical wandering, seeking a safe passage that doesn’t exist against a man who will say anything, and frequently does.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Sarah Green Carmichael at sgreencarmic@bloomberg.net
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Francis Wilkinson writes editorials on politics and U.S. domestic policy for Bloomberg Opinion. He was executive editor of the Week. He was previously a writer for Rolling Stone, a communications consultant and a political media strategist.
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