"Talking Policy" as Shadow Puppet Theater: Republicans and Reporters Define Down Policy Analysis
Chris Coons became one of Delaware's US Senators through an improbable stroke of luck. In 2010, he was the Democratic Party's sacrificial lamb, a local politician nominated to run against a popular, moderate Republican who was that state's incumbent Member of Congress and who was expected to easily make the step up to the Senate. Then the proto-MAGA Tea Party happened, and instead of running against a sober, likable public servant, Coons found himself running against someone who was so weird (yes, that word fits pre-Trump/Vance nutcases, too) that she ran a campaign ad in which she declared: "I'm not a witch."
This is not to disparage Coons, who I happen to have known since his college days and who has served in the Senate admirably. But just as Barack Obama's Senate seat landed in his lap due to a completely unexpected scandal that flipped what was supposed to be an easy win for a high-profile Republican in Illinois, Coons's national career was birthed by pure happenstance. Those moments are gifts, and the politicians who do good things with those circumstances are a gift to the rest of us.
Why talk about Coons? This was, in fact, a roundabout way to mention the not-witch in his political origin story, who was a joke in every way but who raised especially loud guffaws when she announced during an interview on one of the cable news channels that she was a "policy wonk." This was funny on its face, but it in fact made a certain kind of sense that she said it, because there was at that time a wonk-chic fad in US politics. She knew that the cool kids in the political sandbox were all talking positively about being policy wonks, so she decided to announce that she was one, too.
Coons's long-ago-vanquished opponent was truly unique at the time, but her desire to put on airs about being "serious" and policy-oriented has now permeated not only the rest of her political party but the national press corps as well. Republicans who want to sound grounded and wizened say that Donald Trump should "stick to policy discussion" and leave the playground taunts behind. News reporters complain solemnly that Kamala Harris is "a bit light on policy" for their tastes. If you want to look good in American politics, all you have to do is say that "policy issues" should be the focus of our discussion.
Earlier this week, Verdict published a two-part column in which I explained why the conventional wisdom that politicians should focus on "policy issues" is a sham. In "Republicans Want Trump to Focus on Their Policy Stances? Really?!" (parts One and Two), I took issue specifically with the Republicans who have been begging Trump not to talk about murderous sharks, murderous windmills, and murderous fictional characters but instead to discuss "policy issues."
As I explained in that column, the last thing those people want is for Trump to discuss policy solutions to real-world problems, both because he (and Republicans) have offered no solutions at all to some of the most high-profile policy matters -- nada on grocery prices and only "concepts of a plan" on health care, to mention two -- while Trump's supposed solutions to other policy questions are terrible and unpopular (internment camps and "bloody" mass deportations, along with price-spikes caused by huge new tariffs). Moreover, I noted that the Republicans' long-running policy playbook on every other major issue -- gun violence, abortion and reproductive rights, marriage equality, the environment, voter suppression, and everything else -- are also huge political losers.
Even so, there is an endless parade of Republican politicians and gullible reporters and pundits who continue to push the idea that Trump should "talk about policy." That, however, merely means that they want Trump to talk about certain issues and not others. In particular, they want Trump to focus on the economy and immigration, where he supposedly "polls well." Even on its own terms, however, half of that has now disappeared, with Harris now seeing better poll numbers than Trump on voters' "trust" in running the economy. So even there, the "policy issue" on which Trump should focus is apparently now immigration and immigration alone.
Trump is, of course, already focused on immigration, but he is doing so by amplifying an insane and racist story about migrants eating pets. That is certainly a "discussion" about a policy issue, but it is not a serious policy discussion in that there is no content to the Trump line of attack. That is, there is no attempt to identify a problem, to figure out what has gone wrong, and then to propose and defend a policy change that would supposedly solve the problem. Even before Trump and Vance decided to use the mostly Republican people in Springfield, Ohio, as cannon fodder in their deranged war of fearmongering and hatred, Trump did little else than talk about the "policy issue" of immigration, but with no policy content. It was merely scary stories about how the "prisons and asylums" in Spanish-speaking countries were being emptied to send the worst people to the US.
(Aside: I am glad that the Republican governor of Ohio is castigating Trump and Vance for what they are doing to the people in his state. But unless that 77-year-old man with no political future -- he is term-limited, set to leave office in January 2027 at age 80 -- comes out and endorses Harris-Walz, he is full of it. He might surprise us all, but consider me a skeptic.)
The more important point, however, is that there is nothing policy-oriented about how Republicans want Trump to talk about immigration and the economy, either. In my Verdict column, I quoted a former Republican congressperson from Florida -- a man who lost his seat because he was supposedly too moderate for his red district -- who said this: "It’s not his policy. If you look at some of his policies, people support his policies. His economic policies, I mean the polls are all there. It’s on style that Donald Trump loses."
In the column, I described that statement as "simply hallucinatory." Trump has almost no substance, and the policies that he supports are not at all popular. So what could it mean to say that "the polls are all there"? Again, the idea is to have policy-free discussions about the economy and immigration because polls show that those are the issues that get the most negative responses from voters, who then blame the incumbent President and his party. And I do mean policy-free. Neither Trump nor the Republicans have offered anything like what I described above -- identify a problem, diagnose what went wrong, advocate an actual policy proposal, and explain and defend why that proposal could solve the problem -- nor do they want to.
This is a variation on the complaint that Harris supposedly does not engage with the press in a way that would make them feel important, which supposedly compares negatively with Trump's willingness to "engage with" reporters. But of course Trump does not interact with reporters in anything like the political give-and-take that journalists are calling for from Harris. He simply insults and berates them, refusing to answer their questions and using the air time to repeat his grievances. But he stands in front of them and talks, so he gets a pass.
The supposed policy discussions that Republicans and reporters crave are similarly empty, with Trump not discussing policy at all (while Harris is criticized for being insufficiently specific). Just as Senator Coons's former opponent knew that it would look good to call herself a policy wonk, now everyone tries to get in on the game by saying that Trump should "talk policy," whereas what Republicans mean -- and what most reporters seem willing to settle for -- is merely content-free scare tactics.
Are there any subjects that are inherently not policy questions? Perhaps, but even the issues that people seem to believe are out of bounds could in fact be serious matters for political debate, depending on the circumstances. If there were evidence that windmills do cause cancer, for example, then we would want -- we should demand -- our leaders to address that important issue. If there were a statistically meaningful rise in shark attacks, politicians should respond thoughtfully. (I guess Hannibal Lecter might be an example of a non-issue, the proverbial exception that proves the rule.)
In other words, it is rather meaningless to draw a distinction between issues that are per se serious policy matters and other issues that are frivolous in principle. Facts on the ground determine what is a ripe question for policy analysis and political competition.
But that is not what the Republicans or the press are talking about. Even setting aside the unequal treatment that the press visits on Harris-Walz, the idea is obviously that Trump should talk about policy areas about which voters are the most unhappy and then make them even unhappier. No policy solutions needed -- or welcome.
I am not a witch, either, but I am a real-deal, lifelong policy wonk. Watching these people wander around saying "policy issues, policy issues, policy issues" is amusing, because it is so similar to the efforts of teenagers to dress up like grownups and use big words to sound important. Or, as I put it in a Dorf on Law column a year ago:
For fans of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," think of Jake Peralta's attempt to sound smart at an art gallery by saying, "Hmm, cool, human chrysalis and whatnot." Or, for those favoring older TV classics, there is always Radar O'Reilly's "Ahh, Bach!" on "M*A*S*H."
That is not a policy discussion. Trump is incapable of anything resembling real policy analysis, and Republicans know -- or should know -- that although they are somewhat capable of it, they never land on policy solutions that people support. Republicans must surely love Trump's vacuousness, and their protestations to the contrary are cynical distractions. They wish only that they could get Trump to be vacuous on the terms that they think will give them the greatest short-term political advantage. And if the press has anything to say about it, Republicans might get their wish.