If you want a quick lesson in the meaning of the phrase “can’t win for losing,” you can’t do better than the Friday edition of Tiger Beat on the Potomac. On Thursday night, the president spent fifty minutes in an open press conference that turned into a master class in foreign-policy questions. (Personally, by the time it ended, I knew more about the relationship between Korea and Japan than I did when it began.) In response, here are the lead stories on the TBOTP home page:

‘What You Are Doing in Milwaukee Might Actually End Up Saving the Entire Civilization’ (about a Trump activist in Milwaukee)

Biden at his press conference: See, I’m up to the job

Jeffries met privately with Biden to relay electability concerns

18th Hill Dem calls on Joe Biden to drop reelection bid

And so on.

I was wavering. I admit it. But I’m not anymore. That was a president onstage on Thursday. But I’ve watched the dynamic of the past two weeks play out time and again. It chased Bill Clinton for eight years and it chased Al Gore for eight months. Clinton survived, barely, and Gore lost an election to trivia and some really horseshit reporting from the campaign press, which, in combination with the Florida Hijack, gave us the previous Republican Worst President Ever.

Under the rubric of the Clinton Rules, this dynamic holds that once The Story is birthed, no matter which set of ratf*ckers or bad reporters are its midwives, The Story must be kept alive. There’s always another document, another “issue,” another set of questions leading to Clouds and Shadows over the politician in question. Watching an unsuccessful Arkansas land deal, the key witnesses to which were a live crook and a dead nut, get blown up into what it became, with all the ancillary goonery of Travelgate and Filegate, and the Billing Records, and the Cattle Futures, and the indecent use of poor Vince Foster’s suicide. Questions remain. Clouds gather. Expense accounts fatten. Holy Jesus, this has been a bad month for my battered profession.

This time around, of course, there seem to be dozens of Democratic pols and plutocrats who, both anonymously and otherwise, have decided to join in the fun. None of them seem to have any idea what they want beyond forcing the incumbent president off the ticket. (The ones recommending that Vice President Harris simply get bumped up to the top spot appear to be surpassingly rare.) It hasn’t been a great couple of weeks for the profession of politics, either.

Related Story

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. 

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pr%2FQrqCrnV6YvK57zZ6urGWgpLmqwMicqmion6G2tbXCrGaabmFqhXOCl2tmm6GUmrtuvNGeqqxlk6S7p7HRnqWcnV2jrrW7jg%3D%3D