Im-Politic: Rating the Journalists at the Front-runners’ Republican Debate

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bankruptcy, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Chris Wallace, debate, Donald Trump, Fox News, Im-Politic, Jeb Bush, John Kasich, journalism, Marco Rubio, Megyn Kelly, Mike Huckabee, religion, Republicans, Scott Walker, Silicon Valley

Since Donald Trump still almost certainly won’t be the Republicans’ presidential nominee this year, my reactions to the first GOP presidential debates need to deal with the 16 other candidates, too. But since Trump is still The Story of Campaign 2016 so far, I need to start off by correcting a mistake in yesterday’s post on his performance. I was slightly inaccurate in my description of his response in the front-runners’ debate to Fox News’ Megyn Kelly’s charge that he’s often insulted women.

Then I’ll segue into an examination of how well or poorly she and her colleagues organized and conducted the session – because the press’ performance clearly will have powerful effects on the presidential race itself.

I wrote yesterday that, rather than trashing Kelly personally, Trump should have focused on framing her question as typifying the superficial “gotcha” mentality that’s dominated mainstream journalism for so long and thus helped degrade American politics. (And of course, Trump should have made this observation “in sorrow, not in anger.”)

But Trump actually did try to Go Serious. As the transcript shows, after his Rosie O’Donnell crack, he insisted that “I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time either. This country is in big trouble. We don’t win anymore. We lose to China. We lose to Mexico both in trade and at the border. We lose to everybody.” The trouble is, immediately afterwards, and especially the following day, he was back in Tabloid Land.

Nonetheless, overall, Kelly and her Fox colleagues did a pretty good – and “fair and balanced” – job at the front-runners event. The initial questions for all the candidates zeroed in on conspicuous weak spots in their records – from neurosurgeon Ben Carson’s unfamiliarity with foreign policy, to former Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s dynasty and “W” problems, to New Jersey’s economic woes under Governor Chris Christie, to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s extreme pro-life abortion stance, to former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s challenge in broadening his appeal beyond Christian conservative ranks.

My main criticism on this score is that the subjects of these questions were somewhat too conspicuous. That is, each candidate had obviously heard all of them before, and had had plenty of time to rehearse answers. Moreover, some really obvious follow-ups were neglected throughout the debate. For example, why didn’t any of the panelists point out to Bush that the impressive numbers racked up by his state’s economy during his tenure stemmed largely from a housing bubble that burst disastrously just as he was leaving office?

In addition, Fox’s Chris Wallace once again demonstrated how pitifully little political reporters know about business and finance. As Wallace saw it, a handful of bankruptcies declared by Trump’s businesses over the last 25 years cast doubt on the candidate’s qualifications “to run the nation’s business.” Wallace obviously doesn’t know that failure is such a common aspect of doing business that, as one analyst has noted (and in connection with this Wallace question) it’s “a background term to every contract.  It’s an embedded option.  Lenders price for it.”

Perhaps more important, Wallace is obviously clueless about the essential role bankruptcy plays in producing success. A good businessman or woman uses it the way any intelligent person uses the mistakes that all of us make – as a learning opportunity. Indeed, the most celebrated part of U.S. economy (rightly or wrongly), Silicon Valley, has begun to celebrate failure as an essential ingredient of eventual success.

Finally, I was troubled by the Fox journalists’ decision to pose this viewer question: “I want to know if any of them have received a word from God on what they should do and take care of first.”

I know that subjects like this are of intense interest to many Republican voters in particulara. But you don’t have to oppose injecting religion into political and public policy matters to recognize that this query was bound to unleash a torrent of the most vapid homilies imaginable, notably Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s declaration that “I believe God has blessed our country. This country has been extraordinarily blessed. And we have honored that blessing. And that’s why God has continued to bless us” and Ohio Governor John Kasich’s “I do believe in miracles.”

The only saving grace (no pun intended!) in this segment of the debate was Walker’s statement that “I know that God doesn’t call me to do a specific thing, God hasn’t given me a list, a Ten Commandments, if you will, of things to act on the first day. What God calls us to do is follow his will.”

Here’s hoping that the rest of the 2016 field shows similar restraint in declaring themselves or their agenda or their party to be the Almighty’s anointed messengers – with all the ugly insinuations about their opponents that logically follow, whether they’re intended or not.

Next on RealityChek: a discussion of those Republican candidates not named Donald Trump, including the participants in the undercard.

Following Up: Emerging Possibilities on Hacking Retaliation and a Cyber Balance of Terror

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Adam Schiff, asymmetrical war, balance of terror, China, Chris Wallace, Cold War, Congress, cyber-security, cyber-war, deterrence, Following Up, Fox News Sunday, hacking, infrastructure, Martin Dempsey, nuclear weapons, Obama, Office of Personnel Management, Peter King, Russia, terrorism

Here’s a suggestion for Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace – start watching some recent episodes of your own show before conducting interviews. You might be able to move the public debate on vital issues forward, rather than trodding over well-worn ground.

Wallace led off this morning’s show with a look at this past week’s news that the federal government’s personnel agency has been hacked twice in the last year, and that China is widely suspected as the attack’s source. And that’s entirely understandable. The examination of whether the Obama administration is dealing adequately with cyber threats, moreover, is vitally important. What was completely weird was how Wallace – not to mention his two Congressional guests, who both have key national security posts on the intelligence committee – handled the issue of retaliation.

It began with Representative Adam Schiff of California, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, stating that “one of the big things that we really have to do in addition to our defense is figure out when we’re going to go on offense and how we’re going to provide a deterrent to future attacks.”

Wallace then asked Republican Congressman Peter King of New York, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, “Do we need to retaliate against the people that we believe are conducting cyber warfare against us?” King answered, “I believe we do. I don’t think we should announce what we’re doing. I think the president and his administration have the capacity to respond once they find out, you know, sort of malware signature, who they believe this is. Then, I think, yes, there has to be a price to pay for this.”

Sounds perfectly reasonable, right? Except that only this January, no less than the nation’s top uniformed military officer told Wallace that the United States currently lacks superiority in cyber-war capabilities. According to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, “In every domain…we generally enjoy a significant military advantage. We have peer competitors in cyber….We don’t have an advantage. It’s a level playing field, and that makes this Chairman very uncomfortable.”

Now Dempsey might have been mistaken (though that’s unlikely) or engaged in a head fake against America’s adversaries (though I can’t imagine the rationale for this one). But why didn’t Wallace remember that this is the most plausible reason for the nation’s failure to strike – fear that attackers can cause still further damage? Moreover, hadn’t Schiff or King been aware of Dempsey’s statement? If they were, do they have their own reasons for considering Dempsey mistaken?

In any event, the more I think about the issue, the more I wonder if the United States would retaliate even with clear-cut superiority. Think of it this way. Relatively few Americans nowadays – particularly in the big cities, which would be most vulnerable to a truly debilitating cyber attack – have any recent experience with the kind of privation and disruption that such a hack could create. Even most prosperous Russians and Chinese do – and then some. So even though these two countries are increasingly networked and enjoying the advantages thereof, it seems clear that they’re much better positioned to cope with cyber-generated confusion than Americans.

Another important point recently was brought to my attention. For all the damage done by foreign hackers to date, they haven’t yet (apparently) launched the kinds of attacks that could bring such massive disruptions – e.g., by bringing down the banking system, or the communications and energy infrastructure. It’s possible that these systems are adequately protected. But it’s also possible that China’s hackers in particular understand that their country would be victimized as well, since it’s so heavily dependent on exporting to the United States for continued growth and economic progress.

So although it’s certain that cyber attacks will continue, it’s also distinctly possible that many will stay relatively restrained. This could mean that America has more scope to retaliate than seems currently to be the case, but also that it has less need – and that we’ll need to (keep) getting used to greater levels of cyber risk if we want to keep reaping the benefits we perceive from more networked lives. In other words, we may be seeing the emergence of a cyber balance of terror similar to the nuclear balance of terror that helped avert great-power conflict during the Cold War. 

But there would still remain the risk of attacks from sources that don’t feel any stake in America’s continued viability, and could have even more broadly destructive aims. Dealing with these hackers – who could belong to major terrorist groups – will be complicated by the asymmetry problem: Relatively modest capabilities seem able to inflict tremendous damage on America’s economy and society.  Moreover, the perpetrators could be exceedingly difficult to track down and hack in return, and these enemies would have relatively little to lose in terms of physical assets and large-scale social systems. These observations lead me to the conclusion that the key to defeating these hackers lies not in the cyber realm but in the domain of broader counter-terrorism policies.