Comey. Cohen. Strzok. Page. Blasey Ford. Kavanaugh. Mueller. Taylor and Kent. Are you fed up yet?
It sometimes feels as if the last three years in politics have consisted of a series of show testimonies or hearings. All have been furiously hyped by the media. All have proved tedious, the possible exceptions being Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh. Those became fascinating in a disturbing way.
The rest have just been dull. Governmental enquiries and hearings generally are. Idiots on Twitter LOL and snark at the silly ‘popcorn’ moments. But nobody really cares. We all move on and look ahead the next ‘blockbuster’ moment, which never materializes.
It’s odd. We are told, disapprovingly, by anti-Trump voices that this is the reality TV presidency. Yet the same voices seem utterly fixated by the Trump show. They revel in the mere possibility of a dramatic televisual moment: the big gotcha denouement which never quite arrives.
Now, we have impeachment. Adam Schiff is in his element. It’s the grand finale, apparently, but the ratings are tumbling. Resistance reality TV has jumped the shark.
People know what ‘quid pro quo’ means. We aren’t stupid. But this Ukrainian business is arcane: the story is turgid.
Pundits suggest that the only reason the American public isn’t furious about Trump’s evident corruption is because we can’t follow the storyline. Well, yes, all those Slavic names are hard to follow. But maybe the public have been told too many times that their president is about to be exposed as a villain. They’ve stopped tuning in.
