Democrats must command attention, or they will stay drowned out by noise
In the 1995 movie, “The American President,” White House advisor Lewis Rothchild informs President Andrew Shepherd that his political opponent, Bob Rumson, is the only one doing the talking.
Rothchild’s advice was blunt: “People want leadership and in the absence of genuine leadership they’ll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They’re so thirsty [for leadership] they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand.”
In today’s social media world, those who make the most noise are the ones who often win in politics. Silence is no longer golden.
But in our noisy world, the noise can become overwhelming. In his Washington Post column, Eugene Robinson advises readers to “distinguish the signal from the noise.”
Robinson’s advice is reminiscent of a comment that Attorney General John N. Mitchell made at the start of the Nixon administration. In 1969, Mitchell told reporters, “Watch what we do, not what we say.” At the time, Mitchell’s statement was a tacit admission that while President Nixon would obey court orders to desegregate public schools, he would continue to voice noisy public objections.
Facing a resurgent President Trump, Democrats are attempting to draw distinctions between the signals and the noise. Referring to the noisy distractions emanating from the Trump White House, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) says, “We’re not going to swing at every pitch.”
But what Jeffries doesn’t understand is that the noise matters as much as the signal.
In his new book, “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource,” Chris Hayes writes that attention “is the substance of life.” Today, attention is a commodity that is bought and sold. And what Trump has taught us is that attention — even negative attention — is better than none at all.
Trump’s noisemaking is attention-getting. During his first weeks in office, Trump has made numerous false claims, including attributing the tragic collision at Reagan National Airport to DEI programs instituted by former presidents Biden and Obama, rounding up undocumented immigrants and filming the encounters with television’s Dr. Phil, canceling Black History Month events, firing senior FBI and government officials and even pardoning the Jan. 6 rioters who attacked police.
Focusing on public service — with an emphasis on the word "service" — were the bywords of the Biden administration. And they remain the mantra for most congressional Democrats. In an interview, Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) told me that influencing and making public policy is what motivates most House Democrats, like herself, to enter politics.
But Republicans are playing a very different game. For Trump and his congressional allies, it’s the noisemaking and fundraising from their outrageous social media posts that matter.
Scanlon described how the different games the parties are playing influence the way Congress works:
“There is such a clear difference in the skills required for running for office and the skills required for governing. Right now, it’s the noisemaking skills and outrageous social media posts that are used to raise money that get many people elected. We have several examples of folks in Congress who are not serious about governance.”
Legislative skills require that members of Congress become skilled practitioners of bipartisanship. And most voters say they value that talent. For example, a 2023 poll found that 89 percent believed requiring the two parties to work together to solve problems was a “good thing.”
But bipartisanship often involves compromises made behind closed doors. When that happens, the microphones go silent.
Instead of legislating, Republicans realize that obdurate opposition to whatever the Democrats may propose, and using social media posts to fuel their outrage, gets attention. And in a world where attention is a valued commodity, Republicans have reaped political gold.
Maintaining attention is an art form. Joe Biden never commanded it. But those presidents who have successfully used the bully pulpit were the ones who mastered the mediums of their day.
Abraham Lincoln’s mastery of the written word was perfectly suited for the newspapers of his day. For John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, it was their television skills that lifted their public standing. For Donald Trump, it is social media that has become his megaphone.
Scanlon recalled that during Trump 1.0, “You would get up every morning with a plan on what was going to happen. And then there would be some crazy tweet, and everyone would go off chasing it.”
Steve Bannon, Trump’s consigliere, described the value of Trump’s tweets: “The way to deal with the opposition is to flood the zone with shit.” As Scanlon told me, “People are so overwhelmed at what’s going on they are just shutting down. That’s part of the flood-the-zone strategy.
Maintaining attention is an art form. Just as easily as someone can obtain it, attention can be focused elsewhere. For example, after Trump’s disastrous handling of COVID-19, the attention paid to Trump’s press conferences lost their cache. The public reaction was, “Oh, no, not him again.”
In a world where attention is dispersed, and those who get it are empowered, political parties must operate under a new mantra: Attention must be paid.
For Democrats, it is not enough to wait for voters to tire of Trump and, from exhaustion, turn to them. While Muhammed Ali’s rope-a-dope strategy worked to win his famous fight against George Foreman, it has no place in our current politics.
Democrats need not respond to every Trump outrageous statement. But they need to start making loud noises.
In a world where attention is a commodity, Democrats need to start valuing it.
John Kenneth White is a professor emeritus at The Catholic University of America. His latest book is titled "Grand Old Unraveling: The Republican Party, Donald Trump, and the Rise of Authoritarianism."
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