DESTROYING THE INSTITUTIONS WE INHERITED
In the 21st century, hallmark American and international institutions have lost much of their prestige and respect.
Politics and biases explain the lack of public confidence in organizations and institutions such as the Commission on Presidential Debates, the Nobel Peace Prize, the Pulitzer Prizes and the Academy Awards.
The overseers entrusted with preserving these institutions all caved to short-term political pressures. As a result, they have mostly destroyed what they inherited.
The bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates was formed in 1987 for two purposes: to ensure that during every presidential campaign, candidates would agree to debate; and to ensure that the debates would be impartial and not favor either major party.
Unfortunately, in 2020, the commission so far has a checkered record on both counts.
Conservatives have argued that the moderators of the first presidential debate and the vice presidential debate — Chris Wallace of Fox News and Susan Page of USA Today — were systematically asymmetrical in their questioning.
The moderators asked both President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to explain previous controversial quotes and then to reply to critics’ accusations. The moderators did not pose the same sort of gotcha-type “When did you stop beating your wife?” questions to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden or vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Although the vice presidential debate was conducted with proper social distancing, along with screens and testing to protect the candidates, the commission abruptly canceled the second live presidential debate for safety’s sake and insisted it be conducted remotely.
Yet White House doctors have cleared Trump, who recently contracted COVID-19, as both medically able to debate and no longer infectious.
The public perception was that a remote debate would favor the frequently teleprompted Biden and would be less advantageous to Trump, who thrives on live, ad hoc television.
Susan Page is currently writing a biography of Trump’s chief antagonist, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California. The designated moderator of the canceled second president debate, Steve Scully of C-SPAN, once interned for Biden.
The Nobel Peace Prize has been subject to criticism over the years for failing to adequately recognize either diplomatic or humanitarian achievement.
In 2009, the Nobel Peace Prize went to President Barack Obama, despite the fact that Obama had only been president for eight months when the prize was announced. Many felt the award was a political statement — aimed at empowering Obama and criticizing the policies of his then-unpopular predecessor, George W. Bush.
Earlier this year, New York Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her work on The 1619 Project. She has argued that 1619, the year African slaves first arrived on North American soil, and not 1776 marked the real founding of America.
Almost immediately, distinguished American historians cited factual errors and general incoherence in The 1619 Project — especially Hannah-Jones’ claim that the United States was created to promote and protect slavery.
Facing a storm of criticism, HannahJones falsely countered that she had never advanced a revisionist date of American’s “real” founding. Yet even The New York Times — without explanation — erased from its own website Hannah-Jones’ earlier description of 1619 as “our true founding.”
The annual Academy Awards were once among the most watched events in America. In 2020, however, Oscar viewership crashed to its lowest level in history, due in large part to backlash against the left-wing politicking, sermonizing and virtue-signaling of award winners.
The lesson in all these debacles is that anywhere ideology trumps science, public service, history, art and entertainment, ruin surely follows.