You may hate this, but it fits. Follow me through the logic maze.
In an age of instant communications, learning and teaching through sound bites, getting more and more used to an adrenaline rush when you go online, just so that your mind will be working fast enough to keep up with the fire hose of information that’s coming your way…
Biden is boring
He’s calm, composed, on point with what he’s saying. You need to slow down and listen to understand what he’s saying — not because he’s slow, but because there’s so much content coming at you that it doesn’t fit into soundbites. You need to focus, you need to listen, and you need to think.
It isn’t that Biden is old — if that were really the case, there would be comparable reporting about Trump, which is one of the things that has been bothering me for a couple of years now. What’s the difference? Trump is charismatic, but that’s actually minor. But besides that, Trump is a walking disaster area, the center of a whirlpool of chaos. You can never tell what’s going to go wrong, or what direction it might take along the way, but you can be absolutely certain there will be something that will catch your attention, even if it’s negative — and that’s what we’re trained, by the current media bias, to both look for and appreciate.
Biden doesn’t offer the media enough to make him worth their while, by current standards.
Trump is a side show all by himself, even if he isn’t present in the room. Even if you hate what he’s doing, you find yourself talking about it. Even a really poor Trump article draws clicks, at least as many from the people who dislike him as who’ve joined in adulation of him. Biden is just — doing his job. Nothing to see here, people, unless you’re really interested in the minutia of politics or foreign policy, and if you are, you don’t need the drama that Trump so readily provides.
Biden doesn’t lend himself to compelling news content. Neither does Kamala Harris. Because they’re good at the job of running the country, which frankly doesn’t leave much time for drama. They’re not polarizing, they’re not scandalous, they’re not any of the things that pull readers and viewers into increasing page views or video plays.
Trump did. He’s useless at actually governing, because it doesn’t offer him enough scope for emotional feedback, but great at projecting a basis for dramatic interest around whatever he does.
The problem is, the level at which this kind of reporting impacts us is mostly subconscious. So, if we find ourselves not particularly interested in reading about what Biden is accomplishing, we need to find another reason for that disinterest.
Guess what?
“Biden’s too old”
And once we’ve agreed to that, nobody can convince us otherwise, because they’re aiming at the wrong problem. I mean, who’s going to admit that the whole reason is that you’re bored with what he’s doing, even if he’s accomplishing everything you could ever ask for? All you really know is that your attention keeps drifting when you think about him, but once you started “worrying” that he was too old, or perhaps senile, to be able to hold his job, your attention focused back on him. All of a sudden, there was a reason to pay attention, even though that reason ended up being reasons you had to admit weren’t what you’d want in a Presidential candidate. Hooked by your own longing for an adrenaline rush and trying to explain it as something else.
Checking it twice…
It’s not that past presidents have necessarily been more dramatic, it’s that the contrast hasn’t been there to show it off. Trump hasn’t been there as a counterweight, and whatever else he may be, he’s a drama queen:
(a person who habitually responds to situations in a melodramatic way. Oxford languages dictionary)
Can I make the same case for Hilary’s defeat in 2016? I think so. She’s a pretty low-drama actor, as are most of our candidates. It’s easier to create drama against her than to use it to promote her.
So, what’s the main difference between 2020 and today, if it’s not Biden’s age? I suspect it’s the level of fear in the country as a whole during the first Biden campaign. Or, possibly, the fact that the ongoing drama had risen to the point that Trump was overwhelming, rather than interesting.
Does this framework lend itself to any solutions?
Yes, that’s one of the things I like about it.
Adding drama to the Biden campaign, in careful doses, is probably one of the easiest possibilities. A few good memes might help — If I recall, there was a short period after the Dark Brandon meme went viral when there was an increase in his ratings — If someone wants to check that, great. I’m not betting that’s the case, but it makes sense.
Adding drama to the world around Biden is probably simpler, though, and I’m guessing that increasing the talk around the potential impact of Project 2025 will be one of the simplest ways to grow the dramatic impact of his candidacy — as the counter-agent to a theocratic authoritarian takeover. I suspect that convincing him to take the time to help the drama along will be the hardest part of the whole thing.
There are probably half a dozen other themes that can play out, but it’s going to need someone with a feel for what makes a soap opera great to make it work. I hate to say it, but that’s the comparison I find myself using more and more as I think about the problem. Play it not as a horse race, but as competing dramatic themes.
Do it right, and all of a sudden, Biden isn’t going to seem boring any more, and the “too old” meme will slide off into oblivion, which, at least between these two candidates, is where it deserves to be.
And we might even get the NYT back running positive stories about Democrats, if they start selling more copies and views. I think they may resist, but bottom lines are hard to ignore, even if, or especially if, you’re a Conservative.
Think about it,
that’s all I ask.
If you can refine the framework to where it’s even more effective, I certainly won’t argue. Anything’s better than the extended, pointless conversations we’ve been having around the wrong assumptions for the last few weeks.
Maybe there’s a better word than drama, or melodrama, to describe the critical factor here. If you come up with one, please comment.
Addenda:
Fffflats added a video link to a Ted talk in this comment that I would have put in the diary if I’d known about it. “Good Leadership looks Boring”