COMMENT: In the recent Supreme Court nomination showdown, American institutions underwent a stress test. And we saw the political equivalent of the collapse of Lehman Bros.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, which must work properly for the legal system to work properly, quickly became a writhing heap of serpentine partisanship. The Supreme Court, whose judgments are only imposed through the deference of other institutions, was dragged into the realm of low politics. And the media, the essential lens through which we view all else, was too often perceived as a participant in the drama.
Consider two recent stories in the New York Times. The first was a 13,000-word dissection of Donald Trump's financial history that revealed long-standing habits of deception and corruption. It was newspaper journalism at its best - a serious investment of talent and resources to expand public knowledge.
Compare this with the Times' expose on a bar fight 33 years ago in which Brett Kavanaugh allegedly threw ice at another patron. Apparently there was no editor willing to say, "What you have turned up is trivial. Try harder." And no editor was sufficiently bothered that one name on the byline, Emily Bazelon, was a partisan who had argued on Twitter that Kavanaugh would "harm the democratic process & prevent a more equal society".
Let me state this as clearly as I can. It is Donald Trump's fondest goal to make his supporters conflate the first sort of story with the second sort of story. And he hopes this for a specific reason: to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller's report when it is eventually covered in the media. Trump does not only want to argue for his version of the truth; he wants to undermine alternative sources of truth. And this requires him to maintain that the press is "the enemy of the people".