Say it ain’t so
This Politico piece is funny. It is basically about what a dumb guy Kevin McCarthy is but it’s couching itself in a “media crit” piece. It’s kind of a cheap trick:
Is Kevin McCarthy a great big dummy?
That’s not a rhetorical question. Read between the lines of some of the coverage during McCarthy’s 15 years in Congress and you start to suspect that many folks who pay close attention to our likely next House Speaker don’t think he’s the sharpest tool in the shed.
The hints slip in, often as asides: McCarthy is “a golden retriever of a man,” “not known for being a policy wonk,” “not known for his immersion in policy details,” “not known to have a mind for policy,” “a coastal extrovert of ambiguous ideological portfolio who … would far rather talk about personalities than the tax code” and “not necessarily a policy wonk or political mastermind like his predecessors in House leadership.” His elevation would mean that “even though the fractured House Republican caucus may benefit from McCarthy’s networking abilities, others may have to step up to help filter out the details of policy quagmires to come.” No wonder “many believe he lacks the political and tactical gravitas to be a force” and “there are those who privately question his policy chops and intellectual abilities.”
It’s not hard to conclude that the authors of these lines may be trying to tell us something.
Granted anonymity, some journalists do just that. “He’s a lightweight,” says one veteran political journalist who has covered McCarthy.
“I would never consider him to be smart,” says a TV figure who has interviewed him several times.
“In a strange way that is hard to explain, he’s gotten more stupid the longer he’s here,” opines a longtime Capitol Hill reporter who has watched McCarthy since his early days of palling around with the wonkier likes of Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor.
While not every Congressional reporter I spoke to shares this view — several offered faint praise by noting that there are plenty of dumber members; others make the point that anyone who masters a Congressional caucus must have something good going on — it’s safe to say it’s not an obscure opinion.
“We have a grudging respect for his political savvy, navigating himself to the position he’s gotten,” says one beatster. “He has incredible emotional IQ.”
But this isn’t actually a column about Kevin McCarthy’s intellect. I’ve never met the man, much less quizzed him about Aristotle or particle physics (or tax policy).
Rather, it’s a column about how Washington talks: If someone is in line for an important job, and people in the business of telling it like it is think that person is a dimwit, why doesn’t this conclusion get shared with the broader public?
It turns out that stupid may be one of Washington’s last taboos. Left to their own devices, insiders will bandy about all kinds of notions about prominent pols: Who’s a liar, who’s losing their marbles, who’s a dupe. But while other polite norms have crumbled — conventions against alleging dishonesty shrank during the Trump years; recent coverage of Sen. Dianne Feinstein suggests there’s a new candor about discussing senility — out-and-out accusations of dopiness are rare.
Even in opinion columns, the language tends to elide the subject. About the roughest recent assessment of McCarthy’s intellect among the writers who are actually permitted to share their point of view came from conservative Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, who called him an “ambitious plodder … someone difficult for his colleagues to attack because he never had anything remotely interesting to say.” (In the same column, Gerson had no problem using short, specific, non-euphemistic language about other aspects of McCarthy, calling him a “liar” and a “hypocrite.”)
It goes on.
Of course McCarthy is a dolt. Anyone who has observed him in public can see that. And it’s not an act like Oxford educated Louisiana Senator John Kennedy’s. He’s dumb, that’s obvious.
But this piece is supposedly calling out Reporters for not being honest about it when this reporters isn’t being honest about by making it a piece about journalism instead of just Kevin McCarthy being dumb. So he’s actually doing exactly what he accuses them of doing.
But yeah, McCarthy is stupid. Alert the media.