Subscribe
E-Paper
By Gloria Johns
One difference between Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal and Donald Trump's mess is the 24-hour news cycle.
Watergate was a long and winding road. Two years passed from June of 1972 when Frank Wills, a 24-year-old security guard, called law enforcement to report suspicious activity at the Watergate Hotel, until Richard Nixon's resignation on Aug. 8, 1974.
But in those two years of Watergate, contrary to the nightmare we're living now, observers weren't subjected to the constant drumbeat of panelists screaming about the lying, corrupt president on one side and television anchors on the other side offering the president up as some kind of savior.
With Watergate it was Walter Cronkite and the 5:30 p.m. news and the daily newspaper.
But Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia's curious relationship with Donald Trump, and all that's being exposed along the way, seems much more convoluted than anything Watergate dished up. And the around-the-clock reporting of daily revelations is far from finished.
But this heightened sense of frenzy can only be maintained for so long before the noise becomes deafening.
Members of the press have the same problems reacting to a megalomaniac that the rest of us do. But editorializing is not the same as providing information, and there's been too much of that.
As it is, even the smallest bit of minutia has been dissected. Someone wears a yellow tie, another isn't wearing a flag lapel pin ― what does that tell us? The dialogue can continue for hours.
On many giddy occasions, anchor and panel looks a lot like cats batting around a dead mouse. It's off-putting.
And at the same time that the press is under siege in a reprehensible way, they have to accept some of the blame for driving a portion of their audience away.
As a direct result of the daily blather, there is a hunger for normalcy, or at least a safe distance from chaos. And there are those who have retreated from media and created their own designated space to escape the bedlam.
Fox News Alerts? CNN Breaking News? As with any soap opera where the storyline may take days to play out, the same breaking news story announced in the morning will still be breaking news in the afternoon.
More fed up than fired up, "We The People" are choosing to remain above the fray until active participation will make a difference.
In fact, the good ol' days of common misery would be welcome at this point ― politics being too partisan and Congress never performing as well as is expected. Something every American could get their arms around.
Instead, it's become a matter of maintaining a positive balance between personal responsibilities and politics.
And retreating to the shadows, at least for now, is of benefit to party loyalists on both sides.
Democrats are frustrated by their party's meanderings, and there are those who believe that were it not for Hillary Clinton's lust for coronation, and the party's lack of imagination in bringing forward new blood, perhaps the nation wouldn't be stuck with Donald Trump.
And it works for Republicans who held their noses and voted for Trump, hoping his presidency wouldn't be so bad, only to find themselves party to the worst threat to democracy this country may have ever witnessed.
From both sides of the aisle, there is an abundance of disgust for those in elected office who have the ability to demand change but won't, and those who have the ability to say "country first," and "enough is enough," but don't have the intestinal fortitude to do so.
Within the confines of this self-imposed seclusion, getting new tires for the car is more pressing than counting Rick Gates' mistresses.
The press would do well to abandon their habit of perpetual motion for fear of the one mistake which would give legitimacy to the notion of "fake press." And rising from the ashes of the now-cloistered American could be a smarter voter demanding more than leading questions and hyperbole from the press.
That would make for a better democracy ― a ready press, qualified candidates and, an educated voter. Maybe it really is just that simple.
Gloria Johns is a columnist for the Tribune News Service. The above commentary was distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
