In the 1990s, Washington had a “Punditocracy” — the chattering class of television shows like “Inside Washington”, “The McLaughlin Group”, “Capital Gang” and “Crossfire.” I should know; I was part of it.
Let me introduce you to today’s Washington “Punditocracy.”
Ten months into the second Trump presidency, the Republican Congress is so busy with media work that they have abandoned efforts to keep the government open, reduce health care costs, or pull back the ballooning deficit.
Instead, Congress’s biggest product is manufacturing social-media skirmishes. Congress has become the home of the new “Punditocracy.”
Their incentive structure is obvious. Everyone holding a congressional seat knows that being a podcast presence helps with fundraising, boosts name identification and flatters their ego. A lawmaker with a podcast becomes a one-man media universe: host, guest, pundit, and provocateur, all rolled into one.
According to an Oxford Reuters Institute report earlier this year, social media is the top source of news for Americans, surpassing television news. Over half of the country (54 percent) now gets political news primarily from social platforms — where outrage, not accuracy, reigns supreme.
The job description for today’s House members requires generating social media clips and trying to “go viral” to build their brand. This generation on Capitol Hill thinks that is the work of Congress. As President Biden was fond of saying, “I’m serious. Not a joke.”
Even Vice President JD Vance — who also serves as president of the Senate — was recently a substitute host for Charlie Kirk’s podcast after the Trump booster’s assassination last month. Earlier, the White House had dispatched Vance to lobby right-wing podcasters to stop talking about the Epstein files.
How in the world is it a good use of any vice president’s time to spend hours talking on social media?
The answer is that for members of Congress, governing is secondary to managing the political narrative.
The men and women in Congress are following in Vance’s footsteps. And he is one step behind President Trump, who is constantly posting on a social media platform he owns.
In his second term at the White House, Trump is putting on a master class in controlling the media diet of his voters. He produces custom-made segments for television and talk shows on immigrants, big city crime, and loud, performative attacks on his political opponents. He has an administration full of former talk show hosts.
He puts National Guard soldiers and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, some masked, on camera for daily dramatic confrontations.
As Republicans in Congress try their best to follow Trump’s example, Congress has become a factory for “Live-From-Capitol Hill,” podcasting, and video streaming.
Their reelection campaigns, as well as raising money, are now a one-step deal with podcasting that stirs anger, outrage and grievance among listeners and potential voters.
The sad proof of their inattention to lawmaking is in Congress’s paltry legislative record. The last Congress — the 118th — enacted just 274 public laws, among the least productive in a generation. That is significantly lower than the infamous “Do-Nothing Congress” of 1947–48, which passed 906 public laws during its term.
Worse, Congress hasn’t passed all of its appropriations bills on time since 1996, when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was seven years old. The government is closed now, even though one party holds the majority in the House and Senate, because it cannot pass a budget.
Since 1998, Congress has relied on 138 continuing resolutions — temporary stopgap government-funding measures that keep the lights on but kick the can down the road to avoid any hard decisions. The idea of passing a real budget has become a pipe dream.
Even the power to decide if the nation goes to war, reserved for Congress by the Constitution, is left idle by today’s lawmakers. There is no comment from the Republican majority as the president, without congressional approval, uses the military to bomb suspected drug dealers in the Caribbean.
Committee deliberations are mostly performative, giving lawmakers opportunities to create viral moments. Real legislating, with hearings, amendments, and bipartisan give-and-take, has been replaced by last-minute mega-bills that few members even read before voting.
With lawmaking at a halt, power concentrates in the offices of party leaders, their unelected staffers and corporate lobbyists. While Congress is preoccupied with social media, big money lobbyists try to control hearings and regulatory functions by reminding politicians and their staff of high-paying private sector jobs when they are ready to cash out through the revolving door.
Last week, The Wall Street Journal quoted Steve Bannon, the king of far-right podcasting, as comparing the U.S. Congress to the Russian Duma. He said the U.S. Congress, like the Russian legislature, has been reduced to a ceremonial body.
That sounds about right.
And if our legislators prefer punditry to lawmaking, perhaps real podcasters could do a better job.
I’ll kick things off with a modest proposal: I nominate my Fox News colleagues Shannon Bream and Bret Baier. They both have podcasts and are articulate, well-versed in policy, and care about improving the lives of their fellow citizens.
A better class of podcasters on Capitol Hill might be the solution. Calling all podcasters. Now is the time to come to the aid of your country.
Juan Williams is senior political analyst for Fox News Channel and a prize-winning civil rights historian. He is the author of the new book “New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America’s Second Civil Rights Movement.”
