Biden impeachment inquiry is a pretence
How would one respond to the news, let’s say, that Sadiq Khan has launched an investigation into the possible criminal prosecution of Rishi Sunak over the Prime Minister’s connections to some close relative accused of some unproven behaviour around tax, peddling influence, or merely something inappropriate on a personal level?
Now ask yourself another question. On how many levels would this fiction define dumbness?
The point I’m crudely trying to make is that sometimes headlines make less sense the more you understand the context of a story and are familiar with the actors. The potential of a prosecution means a lot less once you understand that it’s predicated on nonsense, as does knowing that a person declaring the investigation lacks the authority to affect a prosecution. Had an American newspaper (The New York Times, typically) written the above story, a British reader would understand it differently, knowing that the Mayor of London has no such authority and that he would be merely attempting to distract, perhaps, from the disaster of ULEZ.
All of which is to say: shift the context across the Atlantic and we might begin to understand how headlines about Republican games on Capitol Hill mean a lot less than the size of the font in which they’re written.
The news that Kevin McCarthy has instructed the House to launch an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden is meant to do very little beyond generating headlines. It is a pretence; a sham designed to produce a very specific effect in the media where the leader writers go large on something as deep and meaningful as the mud after a passing shower. As David Frum, the conservative analyst and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, astutely described it in one tweet this week: “The point of this knowingly fraudulent enterprise is precisely to generate misleading headlines from conscientious news organizations that lack defenses against bottomless cynicism”.
This has much to do with who controls the media narrative this deep into the election cycle and how much dirt Donald Trump (and his many proxies) can throw at the incumbent president in the hope that some of it will stick. The terms of the inquiry are themselves so broad as to be meaningless, so gestural to point in no clear direction. McCarthy says the investigation will focus on “allegations of abuse of power, obstruction and corruption”. In other words, it will attempt to see if there’s a “there” there, which is what Republicans have been doing for the past three or more years with nothing to show for their efforts.
The real story here is one about Kevin McCarthy and an American system that gives him very little power given the current makeup of the House. His role as Speaker is only as effective as the Republican control of the House of Representatives and you might remember the trouble he had to become Speaker. This story is a continuation of that drama, how the rounds of voting went on for days and had all begun to look a bit embarrassing. McCarthy eventually won but only when the so-called Freedom Caucus (hardliners from the right of the party) finally gave in and lent him their votes.
The key word here is “lent”. This was a temporary agreement that effectively raised a sword Damoclean above McCarthy’s head. The power of the hardliners to elevate him was only matched by the power they now have to remove him. Or, in this case, make his life insufferable. One way for McCarthy to sidestep this is to give them a few morsels, the biggest of all is the chance to impeach Biden. The Freedom Caucus has been pushing the “Biden Crime Family” message on behalf of Donald Trump, but it really is the dirtiest game of politics in town. Indeed, the name “The Freedom Caucus” makes the group sound more reputable than it is. Its members, after all, are not the GOP’s brightest and best, but amount to the likes of Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, though not for the moment Marjorie Taylor Greene who was removed earlier this year.
McCarthy, himself, is not from the same part of the party (some might even say the Freedom Caucus is not even from the same planet as the rest of us) and it’s hard to believe he’d have much truck with it if his situation were not so precarious. One can at least understand why he feels that he needs them on his side. McCarthy’s woes are not insignificant. America is heading towards another potential shutdown of government if the House doesn’t pass a spending package before the end of the month. His every instinct will be to reach a deal with the Democrats but, of course, his instincts are also about survival.
Hence events of this week when McCarthy has gone out of his way to make noise which the Trumpian parts of the media have been happy to amplify. Read some headlines and you’ll be under the impression that Joe Biden is about to be impeached. He’s not. There are divisions inside the House where sensible Republicans realise that any impeachment would backfire and hurt them in the election. Yet headlines will continue to be written as though that end is already determined.
Headlines will also continue to be written about the continuing non-story of the 2024 election. The respected journalist David Ignatius wrote a piece in the Washington Post on Tuesday calling for Biden and Harris to step down, which they are unlikely to do. Biden is certainly too old to be running and Harris too unpopular to replace him. Democrats are playing with a weakened hand, undoubtedly, and it’s a point underlined by Mitt Romney’s decision to quit politics because of his age. Yet these realities do not mean that the Democrats do not stand a chance in 2024.
Misleading headlines about Biden are establishing a false narrative about the incumbent. Take, for example, this week’s headlines suggesting that Biden embarrassed himself during his Asian trip after rambling through a press conference, forcing his team to cut his microphone. We are in a cycle of constant misrepresentation. The part of the speech being replayed has been craftily cut out from the end of the press conference, which had already been delayed by an hour and a half, pushing it even further into Biden’s night. In one clip circulated widely on social media, footage has been dubbed with a slow piece of music to convey a sense of tiredness.
Biden had indeed attempted to bring the press conference to an end by saying he was going to bed (Biden does gift ammunition to his opponents). Yet even Pete Doucy, Biden’s longstanding foil from Fox News, defended the President, admitting that “he has been basically working all through the night, the equivalent of an all-nighter Eastern time, so he’s probably pretty tired, pretty jet-lagged”. The President had been at the podium for half an hour by the point a reporter threw an extra question at him after he’d indicated it was the end of the press conference. He answered it, though he fluffed the term “third world” and corrected himself to say “southern hemisphere”, and then before another question could be asked, a voice was heard confirming the end of the press conference, which is pretty standard in these situations.
Biden might well have lost a step – visibly affected by arthritis in his spine which accounts for his shuffling gait – but he’s still capable of working detail in a way that has always eluded Donald Trump. If we ever get to debates between the two men, the illusionary nature of many headlines will become more apparent.
That’s because there is an alternative narrative that you might not have heard, which is that Biden’s Asian tour was broadly successful in unifying opposition to Chinese power plays in the region, in strengthening the US’s commitment to South Korea, and in getting the regional partners to commit to the administration’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. The trip was also underscored by Biden’s most explicit commitment to the US defending Taiwan from Chinese invasion.
They were weighty matters with complicated details that have a bearing on the most important trading bloc – and potential geopolitical flashpoints – of the next century. No wonder many parts of the media wanted to concentrate on a snipped clip from the end of a press conference. But this is where the game is being played. Choose your media. Pick your poison.