Media: It's Okay to Ignore Unserious Candidates

Marianne Williamson

What does it take to be a president?  According to the Constitution, not too much.  You have to be American-born, 35-years-of-age, and be a citizen for 14 years...that's it.  Most Americans would qualify under that (or at least will if they live long enough)-hell, I'm old enough to be president at this point (I am not announcing my candidacy, for the record).  But if you look at the long history of the White House, at least prior to 2016, it requires much more than that.  Between 1916-2012, America elected 7 governors, 6 US Senators, 6 vice presidents, 5 US Representatives, and one cabinet secretary; the only person who hadn't held major office was Dwight Eisenhower, and he won World War II, so it wasn't like he didn't have a reputable national profile.  These were all men who had pursued serious careers in public service, and had experience at the highest levels of government.

Donald Trump in many ways reshaped the conversation about who could become president.  Trump was not an unknown when he ran for president in 2016; thanks to his career on The Apprentice, tabloid-friendly marriages, high-profile bankruptcies, and larger-than-life persona (which he peddled frequently on late night talk shows), Trump was a household name in 2016.  Most people thought, in fact, that he was running largely as a stunt.  Trump proved them wrong in 2016, and thanks to a groundswell of media support (yes, let's call it that-that much free publicity for a guy should've counted as an in-kind contribution) he won.  He beat serious candidates in the mold of most past presidents like Jeb Bush & Hillary Clinton, and changed the dynamics of who thinks they can be president.  While we'd had candidates like Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes, Lawrence Lessig, & Herman Cain running before, none of them had ever actually won the nomination, much less the White House.  After Trump, it became a serious question over who we should actually consider worthy of our time & energy on a presidential level.

This is how Andrew Yang & Marianne Williamson, both jokes of a candidate who had no business being on the same stage as Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, & Bernie Sanders in 2020, got to participate in debates, and in Yang's case, started a second career as something of a Democratic conman, running on platitudes while lapping up money (and getting trounced in a NYC Mayor's election he once led in the polls for).  It's how in 2024 we're getting candidates like Vivek Ramaswamy, Marianne Williamson (again), and Robert Kennedy, Jr. getting large amounts of press that are not remotely reflexive of their chances at winning the White House.

The media has a responsibility to not take unserious people seriously.  It can have not only catastrophic results (i.e. 2017-21), but it also makes the presidential race into something far-from-serious.  I don't think the media will do this, but it does mean that we as voters should call out when they are treating this as a reality television contest.  We saw that in 2016, we saw that in 2020...2024 doesn't need it.  Picking a president should be a solemn, respectable affair.  

And also...it's not much of a contest.  Even people with traditional presidential backgrounds like Mike Pence & Nikki Haley are basically just outsiders in a Republican primary that seems to lean more toward Donald Trump by the day, and Williamson & Kennedy are not the types of candidates who can beat a sitting president in a primary...that hasn't happened in over 100 years, I doubt two antivaxxers are the ones to do it.  The media is getting the most boring primary season in a generation, and they have no clue what to do with it, and so they're interviewing silly candidates, pretending one of them can topple the kings, but they can't.  Comparing Joe Biden to Marianne Williamson is like comparing Meryl Streep to Pauly Shore.  The media is focusing on ratings, and I get that, but if you're a pundit or a real journalist, you don't have to pretend that people like Williamson, Ramaswamy, & Kennedy are actual candidates-you can admit they're what they are, people trying to cash in on a presidential run that have no chance of ever being president.  Trump was a one-time thing, and he only did it with your help.