Somewhere in the afterworld, Grigory Potemkin is laughing like a crazed hyena, thanks to the way America's Mainstream Media (MSM) is extending its kid-glove treatment of President Joe Biden to his chosen successor, Vice-President Kamala Harris.
If you are unfamiliar with Potemkin, he was a Russian military leader and lover of Empress Catherine during the late 18th century. She was on a river tour to the Ukraine during which he allegedly constructed elaborate building facades that were erected, disassembled, and then repeatedly reassembled a little further downriver. The intended effect was to fool Catherine into thinking all that uncomfortable talk from the Tsarist regime's critics about peasant poverty, deteriorating housing, and spreading despair must be nothing more than malicious lies because everything she saw looked just fine.
There are credible doubts about some aspects of that story, but there is no doubt that the Potemkin Village of the Stalin era (and succeeding generations of Leftist propaganda) was all too real. As Sheila Fitzpatrick wrote in her "The Potemkin Village:"
"The Potemkin village existed for the benefit of the educated Soviet public-even to some degree for the benefit of peasants. Like other socialist-realist representations of the Stalin period, the image of the New Soviet Village so lovingly created in newspapers, movies, political speeches, and official statistics was not life as it was, but life as good Soviet citizens hoped it was be-coming. The Potemkin village was a preview of the coming attractions of socialism."
In other words, it was an illusion, a lie, a fable intended to fool.
An analogous process is proceeding before our very eyes in 2024 America. The MSM all but protected Biden throughout his 2020 basement campaign, then continued doing so throughout his declining tenure in the Oval Office. They are now serving up the same protective process for Harris, as she approaches a month of days without sitting down for an interview with an independent journalist. A more fitting descriptor now would be the Potemkin Protective Press (PPP).
There are beginning to be here and there in the PPP carefully expressed puzzlement and feigned frustration with the refusal, going on three weeks now, of Harris to hold a news conference or sit down for an interview. We might even read disapproving editorials here and there in the PPP in the next several days.
That's all for credentials and CYA show. Here's how this process will continue through election day: Harris will agree to sit down with a major PPP outlet — look for it to be "60 Minutes" or maybe ABC News with George Stephanopolous — within a few days.
When that interview happens, there will be a seemingly tough question here and there, but Harris will emerge unscathed. A short time after that appearance, she will also appear at a news conference with a group of (carefully selected) campaign reporters. They will ask some tough initial questions, but forget about hearing any of the evasion-killing follow-up queries that were once so familiar whenever Mike Wallace or Brit Hume was the questioner.
At that point, the PPP will be full of praise for the claimed toughness, honesty, and directness on display by Harris, plus a dogged insistence that claims the vice president continues avoiding the media are "old news." In other words, "See? She's done what her critics demanded, but they keep criticizing her."
For the balance of the campaign, the PPP's reporting will portray Harris as a happy warrior, a savior of the middle class, a defender of the poor, and a deeply feared foreign policy operator. She will be by election day, at least in the minds, photos, and words of the PPP, the savior of democracy against Orange Man Bad.
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If the Harris handlers were serious about discrediting her critics, they would put their candidate where Teddy Roosevelt said true political courage dwells: "the [candidate] who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood…"
That means they would put the vice president in front of a panel of journalists of undoubted toughness and independence. I suggest five candidates for such a panel: Luke Rosiak of the Daily Wire, the now-independent Catherine Herridge, Matt Taibbi of Racket News, and Bari Weiss of the Free Press. And to make things really interesting and informative for undecided voters, number five would be Glenn Reynolds, the University of Tennessee Law School professor and founder and chief editor of the Instapundit blog that has graced the Internet since 1997.
Finally, if you want to elevate this suggested event to one of enduring value, bring in Trump and RFK Jr. to be quizzed alongside Harris. Then the American electorate could make a genuinely informed choice.
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