| | | | Why Impeachment Is Different in 2019 | | Thanks to the Internet, social media, and the partisanship of some mainstream news outlets, impeachment is fundamentally different in 2019, Lawrence Lessig argues in Politico Magazine.
"When Republicans impeached Andrew Johnson for obstructing Reconstruction in 1868, there was no broadcasting. There was no polling, at least not in the scientific sense of today. 'Media' in America meant newspapers, which were largely partisan, but whose effect on the public was hard for politicians to gauge," Lessig writes. By the Richard Nixon proceedings of 1974, America had evolved into "what Markus Prior calls 'broadcast democracy,' with an astonishing 85 percent of Americans tuning into at least part of the impeachment hearings via the three major broadcast networks and PBS." Importantly, audiences were focused "on the same story," and facts were agreed upon. Bill Clinton's impeachment in 1998 saw incremental steps toward media fragmentation, but with "muted" effect.
Today, things have changed: Division is what "pays," Lessig writes—on social media, for partisan outlets, and for politicians—and Americans are watching different stories unfold. There's little chance of legislating the problem away, Lessig writes, meaning it's up to media companies and social platforms to solve it. | | Voicing similar despair about the state of discourse, Brad DeLong writes for Project Syndicate that echo chambers and choir-preaching aren't the only problems: Online, our public debate has been hijacked by bad actors. "In the 1930s, my great-uncles listened to their elders complain about how radio had allowed demagogues like Adolf Hitler, Charles Coughlin, and Franklin D. Roosevelt (that 'communist') to short-circuit the normal processes of public discourse. No longer were public debates kept sober and rational by traditional gatekeepers," DeLong writes. "Nowadays, the problem is not a single demagogue, but a public sphere beset by swarms of 'influencers,' propagandists, and bots, all semi-coordinated by the dynamics of the medium itself."
A Guardian op-ed by former Facebook moderator Chris Gray, who writes of seeing the "worst of humanity" while wading through posts, does little to disprove DeLong's view of the Internet as a cesspool. | | Brexit Is Missing from the 'Brexit Election' | | | As the UK prepares to vote on Dec. 12, Steve Bloomfield writes for Foreign Affairs that "the details of Brexit are oddly absent from the campaign." None of the leading parties want to get into it too deeply: Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson is content to repeat the catchphrase "get Brexit done"; Liberal Democrats would rather attract voters who want to remain in the EU; and Labour's Brexit proposal involves nine more months of negotiations to redo Johnson's deal—a topic far less enjoyable than protecting the National Health Service. As a result, Bloomfield writes, important questions—what Johnson's deal would mean for the UK and what post-Brexit negotiations might produce, for instance—aren't getting hashed out. | | What Ukrainians Think of Putin | | | As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Paris today for the first time—a high-stakes encounter in which Putin retained much more flexibility, Michael Bociurkiw writes for CNN—Gallup noted that since Russia's annexation of Crimea and incursion into eastern Ukraine in 2014, Putin's popularity there has plummeted. Where 47% of Ukrainians viewed the Russian leadership favorably in 2013, just 9% did last year. Moscow may have claimed its advances were made to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine's east, but Gallup's results seem to confirm that for most Ukrainians, Russia is an unwelcome guest. | | The New York Times took a deep dive this weekend into Rudy Giuliani's role in President Trump's orbit, concluding that in an attempt to stay politically relevant (and maintain income), he has ginned up a slew of foreign business relationships, effectively marching Trump down the path toward impeachment. "Without Mr. Giuliani's push for money and frank yearning for relevance, the Trump Ukrainian initiative might never have amounted to much more than presidential tweetstorms," wrote reporters Jim Dwyer, Jo Becker, Kenneth P. Vogel, Maggie Haberman, and Sarah Maslin Nir.
At The Atlantic, Franklin Foer adds more pointed criticism: While some may see Giuliani's accidental phone calls and foreign gallivanting as hapless, the former mayor knows exactly what he's doing. Giuliani understood his perceived access to Trump would attract foreign clients, Foer writes, and the public should know who's paying him. "Behavior that terrified the Founders seems to be the very core of Giuliani's business model," Foer writes. "Donald Trump's lawyer is Benjamin Franklin's night sweats." | | | | | | |
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