James A. McClure

We’re hearing solemn pronouncements from prominent journalists that the freedom of the press is under siege. I’m not concerned – yet – because all I’m seeing so far is mutual sniping between a partisan press and a new administration responding in kind.

I can’t blame journalists for getting upset. It must hurt when the President says something like: “Nothing can now be believed which is to be seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.”

No, President Trump didn’t say that. (It’s more than 140 characters, after all.) The quotation is from Thomas Jefferson but the idea is the same: fake news. Presidents fought bitterly with the press for the first half of our existence as a republic.

What’s happening today is that the news media have returned to their partisan roots after roughly a century of attempted objectivity. Trust in the media has been diminishing steadily as Internet media outlets have proliferated and traditional news media have become politicized, and the election of Donald Trump brought this to a head.

When journalists announce that they are not going to “normalize” the president by covering him objectively, they forfeit any claim to the respect the media enjoyed when Walter Cronkite was the most trusted man in America.

Yet the media folks want to have it both ways. They’re hyperventilating because the President is calling them out as the opposition party they’ve declared themselves to be. It’s ironic (and a little sad) to see poor old Dan Rather stumbling out of retirement to preach about journalistic integrity in the hope that people have forgotten the fake news story that ended his career.

So far, the presidential assault on the media has been limited mostly to verbal insults and mean tweets. The only governmental action to date has been to invite more reporters to White House press briefings and pay less attention to previously favored media like the New York Times and CNN. This is not a First Amendment issue: There is no constitutional right to be called upon at a news conference or included in a press pool.

Freedom of the press will be a concern if the Trump administration blocks access to public information or uses government authority against journalists. If federal agencies refuse to honor Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for public records, that’s a problem. It’s also a First Amendment issue if the government launches criminal investigations against reporters for publishing information from whistleblowers. This bears watching as the new administration settles in.

Ironically, we did not hear sanctimonious speeches at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner when the Obama administration denied 77 percent of FOIA requests, spied on reporters and named one journalist as an unindicted co-conspirator.

Another indicator of press freedom is the degree to which the President and key officials are accessible for media interviews. President Obama gave many interviews but often dodged serious news outlets in favor of friendly entertainment shows and online niche publications. The chatterbox currently in the White House is on track to surpass that record and appears willing be interviewed by anyone, though he may insult them in the process.

Much as I mourn the end of objective journalism, it’s refreshing to see an oppositional press after eight years of lapdog passivity. This administration will be the most transparent in history whether the President likes it or not. We can count on the news media to expose nine out of every five potential presidential scandals.

We’re a nation of smart consumers. We kick the tires on a used car, check restaurant and hotel reviews on TripAdvisor and read food labels.

Now we need to wear our consumer hats to follow the news. That’s because the era of objective news coverage is all but over, at least for national news, and the credibility of the news media is at an all-time low. Everyone is concerned over fake news because it’s getting harder to tell what’s real.

In a politically divided nation it’s easy enough to find news that matches your political inclination and, unfortunately, that’s what most people do. Liberals watch the major TV networks and read the New York Times and the Huffington Post. Conservatives watch Fox News and read The Daily Caller and Breitbart. Getting both sides of the story requires venturing outside your echo chamber.

Full disclosure: I am a news junkie. I have a journalism degree, worked as a newspaper reporter in college and worked with the news media during my public relations career. Even in retirement I read two newspapers a day, follow news online and rarely miss the evening TV newscast.

The profession I entered in the 1960s was obsessed with objectivity and accuracy: Check the facts, get the quotes right and cover both sides. I learned that objectivity is hard to achieve because reporting and writing a story requires a cascade of judgment calls on whom to interview, which quotes to use and what facts to highlight or omit. And then some bonehead editor slaps a misleading headline on it. So I consume news with a reporter’s skepticism.

I don’t rely on a single set of news outlets. A personal dashboard on my Internet home page enables me to browse a cafeteria of online news organizations (mostly free of charge) that represent a variety of viewpoints such as the Daily Beast, Newsmax, the Daily Caller and Real Clear Politics. If I’m interested in a story I look at how competing news outlets cover it. If a story shows up only in left-wing or right-wing media I’m a little suspicious. I mostly trust the economic news on the business channels and in the Wall Street Journal and ignore the “news” on Facebook.

My operative question is “Says who?” If the author of an article is a liberal such as Paul Krugman or a conservative such as George Will, I know where they’re coming from. If a reporter quotes only the Sierra Club in an article on the environment, that’s just one side of the story.

Economic pressure to disseminate more news with fewer reporters means that national newspapers no longer have correspondents in Boise or Berlin, and cable newscasts have fewer on-scene reports and more pundit panels. Less reporting and more analysis inevitably blurs the line between news and opinion.

Ironically, the political divide has made the news media more transparent. Because some news outlets have abandoned objectivity to openly declare war on the Trump administration, consumers know what they’re getting and no longer need to look for subtle bias. It would be even easier if commentators on the TV networks wore red or blue jerseys. We’re seeing a return to the roots of American journalism: the partisan press of the early Nineteenth Century.

The good news for consumers is that we no longer need to rely on traditional media as information gatekeepers. A growing number of Internet newsrooms are producing solid journalism, and nonprofit organizations have taken over the investigative reporting the news media used to do. Former President Obama bypassed the news media by appearing on entertainment shows and President Trump has taken this to a new level by using Twitter as a bully pulpit.

Much as I miss the objectivity I learned in journalism school, it’s easier than ever to stay well informed. All we have to do is kick the tires.

What’s most appealing about Donald Trump’s victory (with apologies to my friends who believe he’s the incarnation of evil) is the prospect of long-overdue government reform. His “drain the swamp” campaign pledge resonated because 75% of Americans believe there’s widespread corruption in the federal government.

The deepest swamp in Washington is not politicians and lobbyists, but an unelected federal bureaucracy that writes and enforces thousands of regulations. Term limits for Congress aren’t the answer. That would make it even easier for entrenched bureaucrats to outlast the people’s representatives.

Donald Trump and the Republican Congress have an opportunity to disrupt the executive branch, and that’s a good thing. My corporate career made me a big fan of disruption. Companies re-invent themselves regularly to stay competitive, and bring in new management to take the enterprise in a new direction.

In the federal government, however, every Trump cabinet appointee will inherit hundreds of executives who may oppose the new administration and are virtually impossible to fire, even for misconduct. In some cases political appointees “burrow” into permanent positions with civil service protection. Politicians are even urging federal employees to actively resist the Trump administration’s policies. No private enterprise tolerates this. When a company changes direction, executives who don’t get on board go out the door.

So Congress needs to reform the civil service system to give federal agencies the same capability for change as private companies. Folks like payroll clerks and wildlife inspectors must be protected, but government executives should be as accountable as their private-sector counterparts. Government agencies need the authority to fire executives (above GS-15) for poor performance, policy violations or criminal behavior without going through years of civil service reviews.

Private companies often cushion major shake-ups with buyout offers that make it easier for managers to leave. Congress should enact a short-term program to offer a graceful exit to federal managers who disagree with their agencies’ new policies.

Conflict-of-interest rules need to be tightened. Environmental Protection Agency employees should not be in cahoots with Exxon Mobil or the Sierra Club, and we don’t want Treasury Department officials to help their Wall Street cronies. Yet it doesn’t make sense to bar experts from government positions just because they used to work for a private company or association. We need a thoughtful solution to enable talented industry professionals to serve the public without corrupting the fairness we expect of government.

Congressional oversight of federal agencies is broken. Democrats fought investigations of the Obama administration, inspector general positions were left vacant and the Department of Justice declined to prosecute corruption. There is nothing to prevent Republicans and a Trump administration from doing likewise. We need something like a bipartisan commission reporting to Congress to hold the administration accountable.

Reforming federal agencies may be the most daunting challenge for the new administration because public employee unions finance all Democrats and some Republicans. In recent years legislation to give the Department of Veterans Affairs more authority to fire employees was blocked or watered down by Congress.

With a Congressional majority and overwhelming public support, the opportunity has never been better to reform the executive branch. It will be a tough fight because every new policy direction will meet with stiff opposition from special interests and howling outrage from the celebritocracy and the news media. But if President-elect Trump is serious about draining the swamp, this is the place to start.

Americans may be deeply divided by the 2016 presidential election, but we’re getting one helluva civics lesson. Until this year, most of us gave little thought to the Electoral College,  the Federalist Papers or even the Constitution. Now we’re getting a crash course on the stuff we ignored in high school civics class (if we even had a civics class).

The post-election campaign to defeat Donald Trump has been educational. We learned that when recounts fail to change the vote totals, the Electoral College can theoretically overturn the election in the name of democracy.  So hitherto anonymous electors were targeted with email, letters, phone calls and noisy demonstrations demanding that they vote their conscience by defeating Donald Trump. This was promoted by scholars of the Federalist Papers such as Martin Sheen, and suddenly every activist was quoting Alexander Hamilton (or maybe Lin-Manuel Miranda). And we were outraged by the Russian hackers who threatened our democracy by exposing the dirty tricks of the Clinton campaign.

There never was any chance that party-loyalist electors would betray the voters, despite the wishful-thinking media hype, but the browbeating campaign offered a shred of hope to Democrats going through stages of grief. Diehards still may cling to the fantasy of Vice President Joe Biden refusing to certify the Senate’s endorsement of the Electoral College vote Jan. 6, or the Supreme Court declining to administer the oath of office at the inauguration. Maybe someone will hide the Bible.

We haven’t heard the last of the Electoral College. There’s bound to be yet another movement to abolish it in favor of a nationwide popular vote. The latest argument is that the Electoral College is based on racism, though nobody mentioned this in 2008 and 2012. A straight popular vote would require presidential campaigns to focus on big states like California while completely ignoring places like New Hampshire, Iowa and most of flyover country. A constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College would require two-thirds of  the states to approve their own disenfranchisement. So it’s not going to happen.

Federalism is coming back into vogue. For decades progressives have pushed to expand federal authority and diminish the power of state and local governments. Now sanctuary cities like New York and Santa Fe are claiming the right to block federal deportation of illegal immigrants. This harks back to a Nineteenth Century controversy in which states claimed the right to nullify any federal law they deemed unconstitutional. Nullification had a brief revival in 1963, when Alabama Gov. George Wallace attempted to block federally mandated school desegregation.

Some folks in California are even talking about seceding from the United States. I’ll bet South Carolina will give them a deal on gently used Confederate flags.

This is a role reversal because it’s usually conservatives who want to shift power from the federal government back to the states. If Democrats are embracing the principle of federalism to defend sanctuary cities, it’s logical that they also will support Trump’s proposals to put states in charge of Medicaid and environmental regulation. Unless they’re just fair-weather federalists.

We’re also seeing a role reversal on the Constitution. For the past eight years Republicans have claimed President Obama’s executive orders and regulatory actions were unconstitutional. The courts often agreed but Democrats cheered every stroke of the executive pen. Now the Dems are telling us that Trump should be barred from the presidency, or immediately impeached, because he is violating the Constitution (by his very existence, apparently).

Expect a lot of activists and pundits to invoke the Constitution with claims that owning real estate (as Washington did), appointing billionaires to the cabinet, holding rallies or sending insulting tweets are unconstitutional and/or grounds for impeachment. The good news is that the political noise may get more Americans to actually read the Constitution. Perhaps universities will even allow its distribution on campus.

The transition to the Donald Trump administration is an exercise in culture shock. Trump himself is a shock to the system, of course, and it’s reasonable to expect the losing party to bitterly oppose anyone he appoints. Where the culture shock comes in is that Trump’s appointees include members of two unfamiliar tribes: military officers and business executives.

That’s scary to some folks. I’ve met people who have never worked for a competitive enterprise and believe all businessmen are greedy tyrants who exploit their workers. That’s what their politicians and college professors have told them (because the politicians and professors have never worked in the private sector, either).

Military officers are equally unfamiliar because most Americans have had no contact with the Armed Forces. Academics and politicians steeped in Vietnam War protest nostalgia would have us believe that generals will either take us to war or take over the government.

I have experience in both alien tribes. I spent 25 years in the Navy and reserves, and 30-plus years working for and with business corporations.

Business executives aren’t greedy, just competitive. Most new businesses fail. The ones that survive compete for customers, stay ahead of technology and market trends, and turn a profit in order to attract investors and raise capital. Successful companies are good at disrupting themselves to stay ahead of the competition. I saw constant change in my corporate career with reorganizations, new products, executive shakeups and more.

While I encountered a few dysfunctional managers, they generally did not last long. Successful businesses hold people accountable by rewarding good performance and weeding out the miscreants. I saw several senior executives summarily fired for misbehavior such as sexual harassment (unlike civil service executives who can appeal a dismissal for years). CEOs are accountable for everything, and are routinely kicked out if they don’t perform. Imagine a government agency running this way!

We may be seeing a new generation of dollar-a-year men, like the industrial titans Franklin Delano Roosevelt recruited to mobilize World War II wartime production. I am more comfortable with self-made billionaires running the government than with career politicians who have become multimillionaires by holding public office.

Military officers don’t love war. When I led boarding parties and stood bridge watches in the Navy, I understood that a mistake on my part could get my shipmates killed and thought about that every day. Multiply that responsibility a thousandfold and you get people like Generals Mattis, Kelly and Flynn. The military take on national security issues will be to deter war as much as possible, fight only when necessary (to win, not to send a message) and bring the troops home alive.

Military folks are rewarded for being decisive, flexible and pragmatic, from the sailor who swaps coffee for radio parts to the commander who upsets the bureaucrats but wins the battle. Commanders are accountable for results and are quickly relieved when they screw up. It will be refreshing to watch “Mad Dog” Mattis shake up the Pentagon.

I am impressed that today’s military officers increasingly function as diplomats, starting with junior officers who negotiate with village elders in Iraq and Afghanistan. We also have the best-educated military in history: The Navy sent every one of my active-duty counterparts to civilian universities for masters’ degrees, and senior officers get additional graduate-level education at institutions like the Naval War College.

Military officers often take over the government in banana republics by default because they’re usually the best-organized people in a failed state. By contrast, the U.S. military has a long tradition of political neutrality and regulations that prohibit political activity by active-duty personnel. Unlike other government employees, military people do not have unions that make political contributions and campaign for candidates. If any organization is going to impose its will on the government, the teachers’ union is in a better position to do so than the Marine Corps.

So we are getting cabinet officers regulating the economy who have actually worked successfully in the economy, and national security officials who prefer deterrence to warfare. Talk about culture shock!

At the risk of contributing to the post-election drama, here are a few observations.

If you insult me I am not going to vote for you. Calling Donald Trump a racist is not unreasonable, given the incendiary things he has said. But when you call everyone who supports him a racist they may take it personally.

That may be one of the reasons why the “basket of deplorables” became an electoral majority. Same thing happened in Britain when Brexit supporters were dismissed as xenophobes and rubes. Yet we’re still hearing from some progressives that widespread racism is the only reason for Trump’s victory. Seems like an odd way to win back the millions of Obama voters who went for Trump this time.

The Clinton campaign focused on scaring people about Donald Trump and struck fear into the hearts of half the country. So the massive outpouring of fear, grief and panic over the Trump victory is no surprise. When I was a Boy Scout, we used to tell scary stories around the campfire and some of the kids had nightmares.

Angry mobs are less effective in the U.S. than in France. Union mobs in Wisconsin failed to stop the re-election of Gov. Scott Walker. Twice. The Occupy movement fizzled. Protests at Trump rallies (which we now know were connected to the Clinton campaign) apparently backfired. See a pattern here?

A campaign of relentless public shaming drove Trump supporters underground. 40% of my state voted for Trump but I saw very few Trump yard signs and bumper stickers. I sure didn’t display one. We’ve learned that many Trump supporters refused to answer polls, including exit polls. If this is the norm for future campaigns, the political prognostication industry is toast.

Nobody will ever again trust the mainstream news media, but we already knew that.

Issues still matter. Polls have consistently shown that the majority of voters are concerned about the economy and think the country is on the wrong track. Exit polls said the same thing. In the final weeks of the campaign, Donald Trump talked about the issues and Hillary Clinton talked about Donald Trump. How much trouble could we have saved if both candidates had talked about issues from the beginning?

It’s official: Celebrities are irrelevant. An unprecedented number of stars busted their sequined tails for Hillary and nobody listened. Because of their distress over racism and xenophobia, many entertainers plan to emigrate to Canada — which has a smaller minority population and tougher immigration laws. Why not Mexico? The weather’s better. Half the country bids them good riddance and hopes Trump will deport Justin Bieber.

After listening to nearly a week of post-election analysis, I miss the elegant clarity of Chicago’s legendary Mayor Richard J. Daley. When asked to comment on each election victory, his only response was that his opponent didn’t get enough votes.