Another 1988 for the Washington Post?
Photo: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive
The Washington Post, a font of hostile reporting and opinion about Donald Trump for many years now, has decided against endorsing Kamala Harris — or any candidate — in her incredibly close, tense contest with Trump this year. The decision, which clearly came from management of the paper (as communicated to the staff in a “tense” meeting), was formally announced in a “Note From the Publisher,” Will Lewis, former publisher of the conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal and editor of the conservative British newspaper the Daily Telegraph. But many are speculating that Post owner Jeff Bezos had a lot to do with it.
Lewis explained the startling decision as a return to a tradition of non-endorsement in presidential contests the Post abandoned 48 years ago when it endorsed Jimmy Carter. “We had it right before that, and this is what we are going back to,” said Lewis, before piously expressing an unwillingness to tell Post readers what to do or think.
You can certainly make a case that candidate endorsements, particularly in well-known contests for offices like the presidency, is an anachronistic tradition dating from the bygone era when print media were the primary source of news and views. But what’s most suspect about the Post’s decision to go dark on the presidential election (like the similar owner-dictated no-endorsement decision by the Los Angeles Times earlier this week) is its timing, on the very brink of a dead-even contest when the fluttering of butterfly wings — or even a well-worded editorial — might make a difference.
Old-timers may remember the one and only time since 1976 that the Post refused to endorse a Democratic presidential candidate. It happened in 1988, when the Post’s late abandonment of Michael Dukakis on November 1 was widely interpreted as a sign of doom for his candidacy. But on that occasion, the Post didn’t cite some ancient hands-off tradition that it had suddenly at the last minute decided to reassume; its “No Endorsement” editorial went on at inordinate length about both candidates’ shortcomings. The language about the Democratic nominee was highly dismissive:
On defense, any president must be part strategist, part accountant: Gov. Dukakis has not got the mix down right — he seems to see defense less as the essential foundation of an effective foreign policy than as a costly activity of somewhat unclear purpose. In sum, the governor’s views and inclinations in this whole field continue to come across as academic, insular, unschooled, risky. This is, for us, the one truly disabling feature of his candidacy.
The editorial denounced the whole campaign as well:
This has been a terrible campaign, a national disappointment. For
our part and for the reasons we have tried to lay out, we do not feel
that we can in good faith argue for the vindication of the cheap shots
that have animated George Bush’s campaign on the grounds that they might not animate his presidency as well, or close our eyes to alarming
deficiencies of the Democratic candidate as a prospective president.
The Post subsequently endorsed Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996; Al Gore in 2000; John Kerry in 2004; Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012; Hillary Clinton in 2016; and Joe Biden in 2020. In 2016, as in 1988, the Post was unhappy with the overall campaign, but expressed appreciation of Clinton as an easy favorite:
In the gloom and ugliness of this political season, one encouraging truth is often overlooked: There is a well-qualified, well-prepared candidate on the ballot. Hillary Clinton has the potential to be an excellent president of the United States, and we endorse her without hesitation. …
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is dreadful, that is true — uniquely unqualified as a presidential candidate. If we believed that Ms. Clinton were the lesser of two evils, we might well urge you to vote for her anyway — that is how strongly we feel about Mr. Trump. …
Fortunately, it is not.
In 2020, the Post was even less ambivalent:
In order to expel the worst president of modern times, many voters might be willing to vote for almost anybody.
Fortunately, to oust President Trump in 2020, voters do not have to lower their standards. The Democratic nominee, former vice president Joe Biden, is exceptionally well-qualified, by character and experience, to meet the daunting challenges that the nation will face over the coming four years.
So inevitably, no matter how much Will Lewis pontificates about the Post’s “independence,” this very late no-endorsement comes across as either one of two things: an expression of disdain for Kamala Harris or an act of cowardice in the face of threats made by Trump against journalists and/or against Bezos’s company Amazon. Certainly the Post’s own coverage of the 2024 campaign rules out a third possibility: that the paper thinks the latest version of Donald Trump is an improvement.
The Los Angeles Times’ lurch into neutrality earlier this week sparked resignations from the newspaper’s staff, and protests and loss of subscriptions from readers. It’s unclear what will happen at the Post, but aside from its general influence, this newspaper is the daily bread of the chattering classes of U.S. politics and government. Bezos and Lewis could have announced this decision months ago but chose to wait until an editorial endorsing Harris had already been drafted, according to the Columbia Journalism Review. It’s a terrible look, and a blow the Harris campaign didn’t need or deserve.
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