Unfortunately, Sunday’s premiere of CNN’s reconfigured State of the Union, which premiered in 2009, represents everything wrong with television, broadcast journalism and, in particular, political journalism. The one-hour Sunday morning news program, which is putting it generously, was soft, weak and incestuous. Billed as an exclusive interview with a former president, whose spouse is running for president, with another segment featuring the brother of a former president, the entire show centered upon access by the new host, who failed to disclose that he worked for the former president’s son-in-law’s mother.
One might be able to overlook such a transgression if the host were not as capable a journalist as Jake Tapper, who hosts CNN’s The Lead and does an excellent job in general, too. But, as I wrote about Megyn Kelly and Maria Bartiromo in their lackluster debuts on Fox News, one expects the best to be better than the competition. Tapper is among the best in TV’s journalism. Last month, he invited and interviewed Islamic jihadist target Pamela Geller after the Texas attack by Moslem terrorists on her free speech event; he was even-handed and respectful and asked good questions in what is one of her most passionate, articulate and persuasive interviews. He consistently asks questions that are sharp, independent and challenging, always questioning the state and showing a grasp of what it means to reduce the news to the individual. Though he’s a former Democratic Party operative and congressional Democrat’s press secretary, and his career includes jobs in both journalism and activism, he frequently asks pointed, intelligent questions like he’s in the Tea Party. Tapper’s coverage and analysis of war news, including CNN reporter Drew Griffin’s fine work exposing the Obama administration’s incompetence and conspiracy to deprive basic care to war veterans, is also very good.
This is why his failure to ask Bill Clinton even one question about his dreadful war and military record in the aftermath of the debacle of Iraq is so disappointing. It’s bad enough that Tapper failed to disclose the interview nature, agreement and audience terms and conditions involved with President Clinton, let alone his professional affiliation with the Clintons’ daughter’s husband’s mother or the fact that he dated the president’s mistress, an intern whose relationship with the president led to testimony which led to impeachment. Tapper’s exclusive interview with Clinton, packed with an audience of questionable origin and totally predicated on questions pertaining to Clinton’s dubious organization, amount to an infomercial for Clinton’s group. The connections among Monica Lewinsky, bombing and refusing to annihilate Islamic terrorists that would launch an attack on 9/11, Hillary Clinton, the jihadists’ Benghazi slaughter of Americans and Mrs. Clinton’s subsequent attack on free speech, are a thinking journalist’s dream. Whatever the ground rules for Tapper’s interview with the ex-president, he didn’t ask about any of those issues. This despite the attack on CNN by the president’s wife’s administration when she was secretary of state.
There is too much cronyism in Washington and Jake Tapper’s Bill Clinton interview reeks of it. This was underscored in a sidebar on another Bush presidential candidate, affectionately referred to here the entire time in subtitle as “Jeb”. The Jeb tag is presumably in accordance with the Jeb Bush for President campaign’s instructions to CNN to reduce and nearly eliminate any reference to that shriek-inducing last name. That the Jeb piece was conducted by the ultimate Washington toadying type, Dana Bash, an imperiously vacuous reporter whose Jeb Bush interview would have been more revealing if done by a high school student, just made the whole show worse.
“Dynastic” is the word Jake Tapper used in opening comments to describe the state of the union in State of the Union, 2015 version. This was before the soft, adoring, obsequious Clinton and Bush interviews and more of the same middling pundits chimed in. If only Jake Tapper had led with his mind the way he does on The Lead, if only he had really delved into the state of the union, not the state of the status quo. I had been looking forward to this program and had anticipated hard-hitting, radical challenges and questions and discourse from the reporter from Philadelphia. Judging by the first new show, Tapper merely strives for more of the same. The opposite is what viewers deserve.