Opinion
The 2016 election: a false equivalency
By Will Kaback ’20
October 20, 2016
Tags opinion
The theme of the 2016 election is false equivalency. Its tentacles have found their way into every corner of the national discourse and, as a result, we have been primed to view the faults and scandals of each major party candidate as relatively equal. However, false equivalency is not making its debut in 2016. Rather, it has ascended to a starring role after years of warping and corrupting our perception of pressing issues. Why, for instance, do news programs like CNN cover climate change by having one person who believes in its existance face off against another who doesn’t? Given the overwhelming majority of scientists who accept climate change as a reality, shouldn’t these debates consist of a coalition of hundreds versus the menial single objector?
When a topic becomes an “issue,” we are conditioned to believe both sides must be heard equally. But this is a dangerous sentiment. Of course, some debates deserve a “50-50 approach,” especially in instances where there is a true split in the opinion of the people or the matter deals with theory rather than fact. With that said, not all issues (or candidates) are equal. It’s far more damaging to apply a blanketing ideology that both sides must be heard proportionally in all cases than to limit such dialogue when it veers away from rationality.
Such is the problem we face with this year’s election. On one side, we have a candidate—Donald Trump—who has dropped any guise of coherence or legitimacy in favor of peddling hate speech and wild conspiracy theories to a ravenous base. On the other, there is Hillary Clinton, an undoubtedly qualified, albeit imperfect (as all nominees are) candidate. To many, it’s astonishing that Trump has made it this far. In announcing his candidacy, Trump infamously derided illegal immigrants by saying that Mexico was sending “drugs, crime, and rapists.” He has spent the ensuing 16 months lambasting women, African Americans, Hispanics, liberals, Muslims and others of all creeds and color.
In recent weeks, his campaign has followed the playbook of sites such as Breitbart and Infowars—racist, nonsensical soap boxes for the deranged that have claimed the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax, 9/11 was an inside job and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are literal demons that smell of sulfur. Trump recently professed his desire to make the creators of these sites “proud.” There is not enough space in a single book to contain the legacy of racism, misogyny and xenophobia that has defined Donald Trump, let alone a measly article. In sum, this is a man who, in the words of New York Times writer Charles Blow, represents the “worst of America.”
His candidacy has exposed a dark underbelly of the Republican party that has patiently bided its time until this moment, when someone like Trump comes along to massage their bigotry and bring it into the national limelight. He is the most spectacularly unqualified and unfit major party nominee for the Presidency of the United States in centuries. As the weight of his transgressions finally begin to collapse around him, he poses the very tangible threat of undermining our democracy, unity and basic freedoms.
But, you say, what about Hillary? What about Benghazi, her emails and the Clinton Foundation? Isn’t she just as bad as him, in her own way? Such is the intellectual hole we have fallen into. The popular line among the remaining Trump supporters is, “I’m more concerned by what Hillary has done than by what Trump has said.” Never mind Trump’s overtly racist and slimy tactics in his business career (he once had his landlords mark the letter “C” on the housing applications of African Americans), never mind his basic lack of knowledge about how our government functions, never mind his illogical or downright terrifying policy proposals (he recently asked of nuclear weapons, “If we have them, why can’t we use them?”). Hillary is perceived as sneaky, untruthful and corrupt. Trump speaks freely, even if that speech is misguided at best, and evil at worst. At least we know he’s honest, right?
To hold this belief is to submit yourself to the perils of false equivalency. We buy into the idea that for all the horrible things Trump has said, the actions by Hillary in her long career in government are equally alarming. There exists more than one flaw in this reasoning. For example, if you want to invoke what Hillary has done, you have to also look at the many successes she had as a Senator, First Lady, Secretary of State, and humanitarian. It’s also foolish to pretend that Trump doesn’t have his own checkered history of misdeeds. Scams like Trump University, shady business practices, suspect ties to foreign governments and allegations of sexual assault all add up to suggest his words and actions are often intertwined. Also, are we to pretend that Trump’s words have no impact? One needs only to look at reports of rising rates of bullying in schools and the re-emergence of figures like David Duke (of the KKK) to see the reverberation of Trump’s rhetoric. Above all, our failure to question the notion that we should be equally critical of both candidates (when they are often orders of magnitude apart) demonstrates the power of false equivalency.
This problem is not limited just to Trump and Hillary, though. Take CNN’s coverage of the Vice Presidential debate. The panel opened their post-debate discussion by praising Trump’s VP pick, Mike Pence, for his calm, respectful demeanor. They then moved on to say that Tim Kaine, the Democratic nominee, had won on issues and laying out a future for the country under Clinton’s administration, but seemed overly aggressive in his approach. And thus, viewers of this coverage were led to believe that demeanor held top billing to policy, temperament to facts and tranquility to concrete proposals. Kaine was criticized for interrupting Pence to correct his false statements, while Pence was commended for deflecting hard hitting questions about Trump without answering them. What should we care more about: Kaine’s ability to forcefully state policy goals or Pence’s ability to calmly maneuver around the transgressions of his running mate? According to CNN, we should weight them just about the same.
False equivalency manifests itself in how we talk about each candidate’s scandals. We seem to have developed a sort of “Trump fatigue,” where very little the man says astonishes us anymore. Think about the furor over Mitt Romney’s 2012 characterization of 47 percent of the country as being entitled, lazy and government dependent. A similar proclamation by Trump today would merely be par for the course. He’s made his name in this election through outrageous statements, ranging from the unfeasible (building the wall across the Mexico-U.S. border) to the inane (tweeting a picture of himself eating a taco bowl with the caption “I Love Hispanics!”) to the downright despicable (mocking a New York Times reporter with a disability.) Less than a year ago, Trump called for “a complete and total shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States, and yet, this proposal is rarely mentioned today.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign published an article in September titled, “126 things Donald Trump has said and done that, in a normal election, would disqualify a nominee.” It’s an astonishing read. It also makes you consider how we can possibly evaluate the two candidates on even ground. Unfortunately, that has become the tendency. For instance, The Trump Foundation is riddled with inconsistencies and possibly illegal practices, yet the Clinton Foundation has been scrutinized to an even greater degree, despite it being one of the highest rated charities in the world and having saved thousands of lives. Recently, Trump supporters have responded to a video recording of Trump detailing his penchant for sexual assault by proclaiming, “Bill Clinton is a rapist!,” neglecting to realize that Bill Clinton is not running for President, or any office for that matter.
False equivalency dicates that we view each new indiscretion by Trump relative to an accusation against Hillary, no matter how relevant or truthful it is. As such, we are conditioned to view each candidate through an equally negative lens. How else to explain an August poll by The Washington Post and ABC that found Clinton to be viewed unfavorably by 59 percent of the country, compared to 60 for Trump? False equivalency has been seared into our consciousness by the endless stream of media that believes there always must be a flip side.
Last Week Tonight host, John Oliver, used cookies and raisins to visually demonstrate the narrative of false equivalency this election. In one hand, he held a cookie with raisins scattered about, saying each one described a questionable action on the part of Hillary. Then, with palms turned to the heavens, he stared unrelentingly into the camera as the raisins of Donald Trump rained from the sky, flooding his desk. In Oliver’s words, Trump is a “raisin monsoon.”
Perhaps comedy doesn’t do it for you. Consider then this excerpt from Ron Fournier’s recent article in The Atlantic, where he writes, “On one hand, Benghazi and email and lies. On the other hand, mendacity, bigotry, bullyism, narcissism, sexism, selfishness, sociopathy, and a lack of understanding or interest in public policy—all to extremes unseen in modern politics.” While I may not agree with his characterization of Clinton’s faults, the overall point rings true: there is simply no comparison to be made between the two.
We must fight back against our propensity to respond to Trump’s seemingly endless slew of eye-popping deeds with “Yeah, but Hillary…” More often than not, Trump’s words and actions cannot be justified or compared to those of anyone else, Democrat or Republican. In past years, false equivalency played a far diminished role in elections, as issues divided candidates rather than temperament or demagoguery. We all recognize this is an election unlike any other, so why are we approaching and covering it like it isn’t? In coming to terms with the extraordinary nature of the 2016 election, we must also do away with conventional norms for understanding each candidate. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump each have their flaws, yes, but to pretend they are at all relative to one another is to subscribe to fantasy rather than reality.