GOP DECIDES EVERYTHING HAS TO BE A CRISIS
As President Joe Biden reaches his 100th day in the White House, this is the shape of American political conflict: He wants to reassure the country that everything is under control, our problems are significant but solvable and things are getting better. The Republican Party, on the other hand, wants the country to believe that we are in a nightmare of chaos and oppression that threatens to drag us to hell — if we aren’t already there.
There are hamburgers involved (seriously), but for his part, the president has so far implemented a strategy that seems almost designed to stay out of the news.
There’s only so much Biden’s reassuring style can do to defuse partisan conflict, however. A round of just-released polls show him in solid if unspectacular shape, averaging approval in the mid-50s. Though things have run smoothly since he came into office — no scandals, steady progress on the pandemic, an economy revving up — overall his approval is lower than that of most presidents at this stage (except Trump).
That demonstrates just how hardened partisanship has become. Just 12 years ago, significant numbers of Republicans joined in the honeymoon for Barack Obama (though they soon turned against him), just as many Democrats had eight years earlier for George W. Bush. Those days are over.
But the question for Republicans is not whether they can persuade their own partisans to disapprove of Biden. That’s not enough. They need to create an intensity of opposition, full of anger and motivation. For that, those voters need to be convinced that what they’re seeing isn’t stability at all. It’s crisis.
You see it in ways large and small, like the argument over whether an increase in migrants coming to the Southern border is or is not a “crisis.” Border “crises” come with regularity, yet never produce the societal collapse that Republicans predict (remember the caravans of 2018 that were going to rampage through the country?).
The message is and will continue to be that the United States is falling apart because of Biden’s inaction, but also because of his actions. It isn’t enough to say that a Biden policy initiative is a bad idea; it must be turned into a crisis reaching right into every American’s home. Or mouth.
Which brings us to the hamburgers. While discussing this kind of story risks spreading the lunacy, this one is such a revealing case study in the spread of misinformation that it’s worth noting. It starts with a ludicrous article in Britain’s Daily Mail that found a university study exploring how various changes in habits, including drastic reductions in meat consumption, might affect greenhouse gas emissions.
The Daily Mail article, produced as it was by people for whom integrity and honesty are utterly foreign concepts, made this leap: Biden wants to cut greenhouse emissions; some researchers said reducing meat consumption would cut greenhouse emissions; therefore “Biden’s climate plan could limit you to eat just one burger a MONTH.” That is an actual quote.
Naturally, Fox News picked up this preposterous lie and ran with it, and before long, Republican governors like Greg Abbott of Texas and Brad Little of Idaho were bravely announcing their intention to stand up to the imaginary jackbooted federal burger police, as were internet nincompoops like Donald Trump Jr.
All these well-known Republicans — all of them — know full well that there is no Biden burger-grabbing plan. But they also think their supporters are dumb enough to believe it, and they’re right.
So these are the two competing narratives of the moment: One is about stability and progress, and the other is about madness and collapse. Either Americans will believe what they see in their own lives and their own communities, or they’ll believe that everything is spinning out of control and the crisis is everywhere, because that’s what they heard on Fox News. It’s hard to know yet which narrative will prevail.