This is easily my favorite week of the year- the time between Christmas and New Year’s. The rush to get everything done is gone and since we have kids there’s no pressure to go out on New Year’s Eve. I actually have time to sit, think and ponder. Lots of my blog posts never get published. They sit in the draft folder in perpetuity. However this post is timely and need to be written today. NPR does a bracket tournament of all the big political news stories of 2017:
I thought I would go through and pick my winners before I compared the results to what Twitter users voted on over the past few days. Each bracket is dominated by Trump stories. Even one stories that include him directly find their way back to him. Before I went through and picked my winners I figured that the most recent stories would go further than ones from January and February. I was familiar with almost all 64 stories although a few were a bit of a stretch (I wasn’t sure what Frederick Douglass’ year was). As I was going through my picks I noticed that I tended to favor news stories that were more than just one crystallizing event and instead an overall trend. Here are my picks up to the championship round.
The biggest upset I had was the botched Yemen raid vs. John McCain’s Roman-emperor like thumbs down vote on the Obamacare repeal. Although it was for cool optics, I don’t think many people remembered it.
But then again, how many people can point to Yemen on a map?
Here it is. Okay onto the Final Four.
Undermining of Democratic Institutions
This is a hard story to synthesize into one event. However, it’s definitely a trend. The president has routinely attacked the media, the judiciary, Congress and the FBI:
This isn’t something Trump initiated. Trust and faith in the pillars of a free society has been waning for a while. Trump isn’t necessarily the cause but he hasn’t done much to reverse it. Trumpism thrives on the mistrust of distant abstract political institutions.
Charlottesville
This is one of two news “events” I have going to the Final Four.
Wait we have NAZI’s in America? is how many Americans reacted to these poor oppressed white males. This story caught a lot of people off guard- the rise of the white nationalism in the United States. But these fringe groups were always under the radar and now are desperately seeking to influence mainstream political thought. It is a sign of the twisted times we live in with a sitting president of the United States cannot explicitly condemn these groups or their actions.
That’s a pretty easy layup even for just a bad president. But it took several weeks for the president to definitely come down AGAINST neo-Nazis. I had this story going to the championship round because of the extensive historical context involved in this news story. Even though it was only one march it brings to the surface complex and painful questions about America’s racial history. One of the upsides to the Trump era is that it forces people to deal with some of the not so pleasant aspects of our country, our culture and our history that we might otherwise have simply shrugged off if Hillary Clinton won the election.
Sexual Harassment Fallout
I think 2017 will be remembered as the year the dam broke for sexual misconduct allegations. From Harvey Weinstein to Roy Moore, the #MeToo movement rightfully destroyed film and political careers across the country and across the political spectrum. This story has many different social, cultural and political layers so I had it going pretty far in the tournament. There’s not a lot I can add to this. The only sickening thing more than the victimization of these women is that it became a partisan issue.
Firing of James Comey
Years from now when American history textbooks are updated with the Trump Presidency, will this be a sentence or several paragraphs? Was this a one-off presidential decision or something more sinister? Part of me thinks the president doesn’t have the know-how or intelligence to pull of a political caper the likes of Watergate (four hours of Fox News a day takes its toll). I had this story going to the Final Four because of how many news stories flow from it…the undermining of democratic traditions, Russian interference in the election, potential obstruction of justice.
I went back and forth before I decided that the Comey firing was the biggest political news story of the year. For me it’s the potential intrigue of what’s behind the curtain and what Special Prosecutor Robert Muller might turn up in 2018. But I’m starting to think it’s only going to be an impulsive septuagenarian with a hyper active Twitter finger.
The APUSH GOAT 