In A Time of Emergency: Covering American Politics Now

In A Time of Emergency

Covering American Politics Now

Journalism 298 // Fall 2023 // Tuesday 2 – 5 pm // North Gate 104

Mark Danner

“Politics” — in the words of a former Speaker of the House — “ain’t beanbag.” From the country’s inception American politics has been intensely, often brutally fought. But not since the eve of the Civil War in 1860 has the United States endured a political crisis like the one set off by the 2020 election. Never before has an American president refused to accept defeat and denounced the election he lost as a fraud. Never before have tens of millions of his followers believed him. And never before has the losing candidate tried to hold onto power by launching a violent coup d’etat. In the wake of the January 6 siege of the Capitol the United States is suffering an unprecedented crisis of political legitimacy. What had been the country’s distinguishing strength — its orderly system of handing power from one elected leader to the next — has been crippled. Will the election of 2024 restore the system’s legitimacy? Or will it mark the effective end of a quarter millennium of democratic governance? In this seminar we will probe this vital question, in part by studying the best that has been written about how the world’s oldest democracy came to this pass. And we will learn together how one goes about reporting on American politics now — in a time of emergency.

Course Goals In this seminar we will seek to achieve three broad and interconnected goals:

1) To explore the present emergency moment in US politics and highlight why it is important
2) To gain familiarity with current political conflicts and with those reporters covering them
3) To highlight basic techniques of reporting about politics

Class Requirements This seminar will be a mixture of lecture, class discussion and written assignments, backed up by selected readings of books and articles. The most important requirements are that students

*Attend all class sessions
*Keep up with reading and writing assignments
*Participate in discussions
*Do one 10-page research paper about any topics which matters to you regarding American Politics

A student’s record of attendance and participation in class discussion, together with the quality of their writing, will determine the success of our class and contribute the better part of the grade.

Schedule Note that classes will meet Tuesdays at 2 pm in North Gate 104 and will end at 5 pm. We will normally break for about 10 minutes at 3:30. Please plan to do any texting and telephoning you find necessary during the break.

Reading Our primary reading will draw largely from a number of books and articles on U.S. politics, classic and contemporary. I strongly urge you to obtain these books in your own copies and in the edition specified, either from local bookstores or from online suppliers, so that you will be able to highlight and annotate them.

Tracking the News A significant part of each class will be given over to tracking and discussing U.S. politics as it takes shape in the lead up to the 2024 election. Following these events closely in various publications, beginning with the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and other newspapers and websites, and familiarizing yourselves with the work of the leading contemporary political correspondents and commentators, is essential. Even if you are not a habitual newspaper reader, you must become one for this class. Also strongly recommended are The Guardian, New York and Politico, among other publications.

Research paper. Each student will have to write an analytical paper about something that matters to one and that one finds valuable. For November 14, each student will have to hand out a printed precis of about 4-5 lines which explains what will be addressed in one’s research paper, which gives an outline, and explains how we will try to treat and respond to the issue chosen. The paper is expected to be around 10 to 12 pages long, double spaced, named, paginated, and printed out for December 5.

AI and Chatbots. Note that using AI tools or chatbots is not permitted on assignments in this course.

Office Hours I will count on meeting with each of you individually at least once during the term. We will make these appointments on an ad hoc basis. I am best reached via email, at mark@markdanner.com. My office is North Gate 32. My writing, speaking and other information can be found at my website, markdanner.com.

Grading. Students will be graded on their preparedness and their participation in class, the strength of their presentations, and the quality of their written work, as follows:

Attendance 25 percent
Participation 25 percent
Research paper 50 percent

Note that regular attendance is vital. Those who miss multiple classes will not do well in this course.

Films. Each week films will be assigned along with the reading. Please try to watch these on a large screen and with the utmost attention. Don’t “multi-task”! Syllabus and Texts. Note the list of assignments and books below will certainly change during the semester. Some books we will read in excerpt, not in full. As the semester progresses some articles will replace books or supplement them. The syllabus will be regularly updated on bCourses and you will receive a fully revised syllabus at the end of the course.

Course Assistant. Our course assistant this semester will be Juliette Piccoli. Alisa will be updating the syllabus with notes from each class, taping the sessions, keeping a list of presentations, and otherwise making the trains run on time. Alisa can be reached via email at juliettepiccoli@berkeley.edu.

 

Possible Books

Stacey Abrams, Our Time Is Now (Holt, 2020)

Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (Harvard, 2018)

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (Norton, 2021)

Vincent Bevins, The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World (Hachette, 2020)

Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power (One World, 2018)

Martin Gurri, The Revolt of the Public (Stripe, 2018)

Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk (Norton, 2018)

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (Crown, 2018)

Norman Mailer, The Armies of the Night (Plume, 1995 [1968])

Joe McGinniss, The Selling of the President 1968 (Penguin, 1988 [1969]))

Luke Mogelson, The Storm is Here: An American Crucible (Penguin, 2022)

Yascha Mounk, The People Vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is In Danger and How to Save It (Harvard, 2018)

Peter Navarro, In Trump Time: A Journal of America’s Plague Year (All Seasons, 2021)

Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (Random House, 2018)

Donald J. Trump w/Tony Schwartz, The Art of the Deal (Random House, 2015 [1987])

Mary L. Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man (Simon & Schuster, 2020)

Jesse Wegman, Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College (St. Martin’s, 2020)

Elizabeth Warren, This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America’s Middle Class (Metropolitan, 2017)

Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Peril (Simon & Schuster, 2023)

 

Possible Films

Dylan Bank et al, Get Me Roger Stone

Constantine Costa-Gavras, Z

Adam Curtis, The Century of the Self

Patricia DiCarlo, Assault on Democracy

Ava DuVernay, Selma

John Frankenheimer, Seven Days in May

John Frankenheimer, The Manchurian Candidate

Christoffer Guldbrandsen, A Storm Foretold

Jacob Kornbluth, Inequality for All

Jacob Kornbluth, Saving Capitalism

Stanley Kubrick, Dr Strangelove

Pablo Larrian, No

Spike Lee, Do the Right Thing

Shaka King, Judas and the Black Messiah

Mike Nichols, Primary Colors

Joshua Oppenheimer, The Act of Killing

Alan Pakula, All the President’s Men

Alan Pakula, The Parallax View

Alexander Payne, Election

D.A. Pennebaker, The War Room

Gillo Pontecorvo, The Battle of Algiers

Michael Ritchie, The Candidate

Robert Rossen, All the King’s Men

Steven Spielberg, Lincoln

 

Possible articles

Michael Scherer, “Joe Biden bucks tradition, bets big on early swing-state advertising”, The Washington Post, September 11, 2023

Reid J. Epstein and Lisa Lerer, “As Democratic Jitters Grow, Biden Campaign Tries to Showcase His Vigor”, The New York Times, September 11, 2023

David Leonhardt, “’A Crisis Coming’: The Twin Threats to American Democracy,” The New York Times, September 17, 2022

Theodore R. Johnson, “The Role of Racial Resentment in Our Politics,” The Bulwark, February 10, 2022

Perry Bacon Jr., “American Politics Now Has Two Big Racial Divides,” FiveThirtyEight, May 3, 2021

Bob Herbert, “Impossible, ridiculous, repugnant”, The New York Times, October 6, 2005

Ferrel Guillory, “Southern Strategy: From Nixon to Trump,” Southern Cultures, Fall 23

Shane Goldmacher, “Trump Leads in 5 Critical States as Voters Blast Biden, Times/Siena Poll Finds”, The New York Times, November 5, 2023

Matt Lewis, “The ‘Right’ Way to Cover Trump Is an Impossible Puzzle to Solve”, The Daily Beast, November 27, 2023

Michael C Bender and Rebecca Lieberman, “Who would Donald Trump choose as his running mate”, The New York Times, November 25, 2023

Robert Kagan, “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending”, The Washington Post, November 30, 2023

Charlie Savage, Jonathan Swan, Maggie Habeman, “Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First”, The New York Times, December 4, 2023

 

Possible videos excerpts

Mike Memoli for NBC News, Biden campaign launches ad focused on his surprise Ukraine trip in February

Scott Glover and Rob Kuznia for CNN, The Oath keeper – assault on the Capitol

NBC News, Video Of Capitol Riot Shown During First Jan. 6 Committee Hearing

Willie Horton, 1988 Attack Ad

Donald Trump, Speech: West Palm Beach, FL – October 13, 2016

 

Tentative Syllabus

 

September 5 – In a Time of Emergency: Introduction to Course

Writing about politics in 2023. What’s the emergency? Politics as a death match. The dysfunctional political system. What Trump showed us. Minority as majority. The current  world of political journalism. Objectivity: the eclipse of the old model. The Fox News model  becomes universalized. The plan of the course. Beginning with the contemporary. Our reading list. Projects and writing. The presentation.

 

September 12 – Our Politics on the Ground: The Extremist Background

Read:

  • Luke Mogelson, The Storm is Here: An American Crucible (Penguin, 2022)
  • Mark Danner, “Be Ready to Fight,” New York Review of Books, February 12, 2021
  • Michael Scherer, “Joe Biden bucks tradition, bets big on early swing-state advertising”,
    The Washington Post, September 11, 2023
  • Reid J. Epstein and Lisa Lerer, “As Democratic Jitters Grow, Biden Campaign Tries to
    Showcase His Vigor”, The New York Times, September 11, 2023

Watch:

  • Patricia DiCarlo, Assault on Democracy
  • Christoffer Guldbrandsen, A Storm Foretold
  • Mike Memoli for NBC News, Biden campaign launches ad focused on his surprise
    Ukraine trip in February
  • Scott Glover and Rob Kuznia for CNN, The Oath keeper – assault on the Capitol

 

September 19 – Politics By Other Means: Violence and Revolution

Read:

  • Vincent Bevins, The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the
    Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World (Hachette, 2020)
  • World map of Decolonization in 1945
  • Maps of Indonesia showing the 1965 killings
  • Maps of Indonesia, political

Watch:

  • Joshua Oppenheimer, The Act of Killing
  • Gillo Pontecorvo, The Battle of Algiers
  • NBC News, Video Of Capitol Riot Shown During First Jan. 6 Committee Hearing

 

September 26 – No Class

 

October 3 — A Broken System? Underlying Fractures in US Politics

Read:

  • Jesse Wegman, Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral
    College (St. Martin’s, 2020)
  • David Leonhardt, “’A Crisis Coming’: The Twin Threats to American Democracy,” The
    New York Times, September 17, 2022

Watch:

  • Michael Ritchie, The Candidate
  • Jacob Kornbluth, Inequality for All

 

October 10 – US Politics and the Tragic Fulcrum of Race

Read:

  • Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power (One World, 2018)
  • Theodore R. Johnson, “The Role of Racial Resentment in Our Politics,” The Bulwark,
    February 10, 2022
  • Perry Bacon Jr., “American Politics Now Has Two Big Racial Divides,” FiveThirtyEight,
    May 3, 2021
  • Ferrel Guillory, “Southern Strategy: From Nixon to Trump,” Southern Cultures, Fall 23
  • Presidential Elections Interective Map – From 1860 to 2020
  • Bob Herbert, “Impossible, ridiculous, repugnant”, The New York Times, October 6, 2005
  • Southern strategy – explanations

Watch:

  • Ava DuVernay, Selma
  • Spike Lee, Do the Right Thing
  • Willie Horton 1988 Attack Ad

 

October 17 – Nixon, The Southern Strategy and Watergate: A Foreshadowing

Read:

  • Joe McGinniss, The Selling of a President (Penguin, 1988 [1969])
  • Norman Mailer, The Armies of the Night (Plume, 1995 [1968])

Watch:

  • Alan Pakula, All the President’s Men
  • Shaka King, Judas and the Black Messiah
  • Alan Pakula, The Parallax View (Recommended)
  • Raoul Peck, I’m Not Your Negro (Recommended)

 

October 24 – The Outsourcing of America: Preparing the Populist Ground

Read:

  • Elizabeth Warren, This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America’s Middle Class
    (Metropolitan, 2017)
  • Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (Random House, 2018)
  • Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary
    America (Harvard, 2018) (excerpts)

Watch:

  • D.A. Pennebaker, The War Room
  • Mike Nichols, Primary Colors
  • D.A. Pennebaker et al, Primary (Recommended)
  • Alexander Payne, Election (Recommended)

 

October 31 – Things Fall Apart: The Loss of Centralized Authority

Read:

  • Martin Gurri, The Revolt of the Public (Stripe, 2018)

Watch:

  • Jacob Kornbluth, Saving Capitalism
  • Adam Curtis, The Century of the Self

 

November 7 – The Coming of the Man: Who Is the Donald, Really?

Read:

  • Donald J. Trump w/Tony Schwartz, The Art of the Deal (Random House, 2015 [1987])
  • Mary L. Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s
    Most Dangerous Man (Simon & Schuster, 2020)
  • Shane Goldmacher, “Trump Leads in 5 Critical States as Voters Blast Biden, Times/Siena Poll Finds”, The New York Times, November 5, 2023

Watch:

  • Dylan Bank et al, Get Me Roger Stone
  • Donald Trump, Speech: West Palm Beach, FL – October 13, 2016
  • Mark Burnett, The Apprentice (Excerpts)

 

November 14 – Populism in Power: Trump in the White House

Read:

  • Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017 – 2021
    (Doubleday, 2022)
  • Anonymous [Miles Taylor], “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” New York Times, September 5, 2018
  • Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk (Norton, 2018) (Recommended)

Watch:

  • Robert Rossen, All the King’s Men
  • John Frankenheimer, The Manchurian Candidate

 

November 21 – An American Coup d’Etat: January 6 and the Reckoning

Read:

  • Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Peril (Simon & Schuster, 2023)
  • ————-, The January 6th Report (US Printing Office, 2021) (excerpts)
  • Peter Navarro, In Trump Time: A Journal of America’s Plague Year (All Seasons, 2021) (excerpts)

Watch:

  • Constantine Costa-Gavras, Z
  • John Frankenheimer, Seven Days in May

 

November 28 – Populism and Democracy: Can Both Survive?

Read:

  • Franklin Foer, The Last Politician (Penguin Press, September 5, 2023)
  • Chris Whipple, The Fight of his Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House (Scribner, January
    17, 2023) (recommended)
  • Matt Lewis, “The ‘Right’ Way to Cover Trump Is an Impossible Puzzle to Solve”, The
    Daily Beast, November 27, 2023
  • Michael C Bender and Rebecca Lieberman, “Who would Donald Trump choose as his
    running mate”, The New York Times, November 25, 2023

 

December 5 – In A Time of Emergency: How Long Does It Go On?

Read:

  • George Lakoff, Don’t think of an elephant (Chelsea Green Publishing, September 1,
    2004)
  • Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (Norton, 2021)
  • Stacey Abrams, Our Time Is Now (Holt, 2020)
  • Robert Kagan, “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending”, The Washington Post, November 30, 2023
  • Charlie Savage, Jonathan Swan, Maggie Habeman, “Why a Second Trump Presidency
    May Be More Radical Than His First”, The New York Times, December 4, 2023

Watch:

  • Stanley Kubrick, Dr Strangelove
  • Steven Spielberg, Lincoln
  • Pablo Larrain, No