A couple of things we can count on during any presidential election are partisan orators assuring us that “this is the most important election of our lifetimes” and media critics complaining that nobody’s paying enough attention to the issues. I’ve been one of those critics myself a time or two, though a half-hearted one, as I don’t honestly believe anyone ever lost the White House because voters didn’t hear enough about his trade policy.
Will America choose hope or fear?
But what about Hillary Clinton? I got an e-mail the other day from a longtime reader who believes the media are giving her a raw deal.
Economic proposals, it occurs to me, are a lot like the equestrian competition in the current Olympics. It’s a bit dry and the audience isn’t big—but NBC boasts of covering absolutely everything, and anyone who looks hard enough for dressage can find it. The Olympics are a model for how the media should be—and to an extent already are—covering the elections. Trump’s veiled messages to gun nuts would be prime time fodder, but anyone hungry to know more about his views on, say, taxing one-percenters could find nonstop economics-issues coverage on a cable channel previously specializing in infomercials on kitchen gadgets.
