BROOKE: From WNYC in New York this is On the Media, Bob Garfield is away this week, I’m Brooke Gladstone. A big discussion among media watchers this week fixes on whether we’re doing too much, like, you know, flooding the zone, on Donald Trump. Because, despite his current poll numbers, history tells us he aint gonna be president. Is he sucking all the oxygen out of the cloud of hot air that usually comprises election coverage at this stage in that game. Some candidates, like Marco Rubio, John Kasich and Rick Perry  certainly think so.  

 

RUBIO: I don’t believe that some of the language that Mr. Trump is employing is worthy of the office. I just do not.

Leave him alone that’s what I think.

PERRY: Let no one be mistaken, Donald Trump’s candidacy is a cancer on conservatism and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised and discarded.

But some candidates, well, one candidate, begs to differ. And he called into MSNBC’s Morning Joe to say so.

Trump: Well, I’m leading in all of the polls by a lot, and I was just listening to you, Joe, and you know we all love you and Mika but I was listening to you talking about Bush and Rubio and a couple of others and you sort of forgot to mention my name even though I’m creaming them all in the polls. I don’t understand --

Joe: Donald, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? We’ve been talking about you for a week! 

BROOKE: Oh, the Donald. You mesmerise the media, like a car chase on the Santa Monica Freeway,   like an untethered Parade float on Thanksgiving Day..

Even us.  In April, David Leonhardt of The New York Times joined us to make the case for journalists to show some restraint when covering long shot candidates. Sure, cover Ted Cruz’s policy ideas… but don’t pretend that he has a real chance at the White House. But, oh, that it were spring! - when the greatest waste of political  airspace  was too much discussion about Ted Cruz. At least he holds office.

And yet, Leonhardt says even if we cover Trump like white on rice, we shouldn’t beat up on ourselves.

LEONHARDT: The media did not create Donald Trump - he was already a very famous person who many people knew about. And not only that, if you look at some of the measures of public opinion like google searches, John Dickerson of CBS and Nate Silver of 538 have done, in some ways public interest of Donald Trump exceeds the media's interest.

 

BROOKE: Right, 62% of Google search traffic for any of the GOP candidates was accorded to Trump. That's a higher percentage than the media actually give to covering Trump. So by this measure, if we were going to be going purely by public demand there might even be more temp coverage.

 

LEONHARDT: That's right. And of course anyone who watches cable television knows that there is some ridiculous overcoverage of Trump as well. The fact remains that while Donald Trump is almost certainly not going to be the Republican nominee, he has never won elected office, he looks nothing like the profile of people who win campaigns, he is attracting almost no support from Republican elected officials and from Republican operatives, and from Republican donors, Donald Trump is almost certainly not gonna be the nominee.

 

BROOKE: So why should we cover him at all? He doesn't even have policies like ted Cruz does.

 

LEONHARDT: Because I think in a democracy you have to take seriously what the public is interested in. Donald Trump came out and said he is running for president, and as Donald Trump would be the first to tell you, he is leading the polls.

 

BROOKE: But as we know at this point in the campaign, polling is just fodder for generating headlines. They're familiarity meters, the sample size is too small, the public's not close to forming an opinion that has any relevance to the election.

 

LEONHARDT: Polls are not totally meaningless at this point. Traditionally the person who will ultimately become president isn't necessarily leading the polls at this point, the person who's actually the leader is irrelevant. But they're up there in the polls. The way that flash in the pan candidacies end up flaming out is in part through media scrutiny. Someone announces they're running for president, they prove skillful at saying things that attract interest, they start to do well in the polls, then they start to get more scrutiny, both from the media and from other people in their party.

 

BROOKE: So you're saying he should be covered in order to accelerate the flame out process?

 

LEONHARDT: I don't think he should be covered in order to accelerate the flame out process, I think the way to think about it is that traditionally when unserious candidates run for the candidacy, when people who have no record of having a policy agenda that people actually want followed. One of the ways in which their candidacies flame out is precisely by this scrutiny.

 

BROOKE: Using as the object lesson Herman Cain.

 

LEONHARDT: That's right. Herman Cain also surged in the polls, began to get scrutiny, past cases of sexual harassment involving him came out and within a few months his candidacy was over. And I think we see some of the beginning of that with Trump. The accusations from his wife at the time that he violently assaulted her, doesn't mean his poll numbers are going to change immediately. But I think that we're in the early stages of this. The mistake that people make is that they imagine that the media is more powerful than it really is.

 

BROOKE: And I agree with you there, but with regard to likening what happened to Herman Cain to Donald Trump that is truly apples and oranges. He's not going to surprise us with more knowledge of his character in the way that Herman Cain was an unknown did.

 

LEONHARDT: That's true. Trump is no Herman Cain. It is still the case that the attention and scrutiny that will be brought to the campaign will painfully alter the number of Republicans who say that Donald Trump is their first choice for president. I think it's worth thinking of what's the alternative here. Is the alternative really that the media should get together and should say hey this guy is leading the polls, but we don't think he's serious and we should totally ignore him?

 

BROOKE: So, how many stories about Trump are right to paraphrase the prune ad, are three too few or twelve too many?

 

LEONHARDT: One of the things that we should be doing in addition to digging through his dispositions we should be asking what policies does he actually favor. If you look at his political donations over his history, he's given a lot of money to people who are way to the left of the electorate. We should say what is Donald Trump actually believe in, if he is president what would he want to do.

 

BROOKE: He says what he would do. He would go to Iran and get a better deal. He would keep rapists from Mexico out of the US. HE would not support losers like war heroes that got shot down. Things like that.

 

LEONHARDT: Yes. there's a lot of magical thinking there, right. And do you think this is also a role for the debates to play. You will see some of the other candidates call him to account.

 

BROOKE: Speaking of the debate, it'll happen on Thursday on Fox but the main primetime event will include only the top 10 polling candidates. Here's tape of South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham who's not likely to make it onto the mainstage.

 

LEONHARDT: The media did not create Donald Trump - he was already a very famous person who many people knew about. And not only that, if you look at some of the measures of public opinion like google searches, John Dickerson of CBS and Nate Silver of 538 have done, in some ways public interest of Donald Trump exceeds the media's interest.

 

BROOKE: Right, 62% of Google search traffic for any of the GOP candidates was accorded to Trump. That's a higher percentage than the media actually give to covering Trump. So by this measure, if we were going to be going purely by public demand there might even be more temp coverage.

 

LEONHARDT: That's right. And of course anyone who watches cable television knows that there is some ridiculous overcoverage of Trump as well. The fact remains that while Donald Trump is almost certainly not going to be the Republican nominee, he has never won elected office, he looks nothing like the profile of people who win campaigns, he is attracting almost no support from Republican elected officials and from Republican operatives, and from Republican donors, Donald Trump is almost certainly not gonna be the nominee.

 

BROOKE: So why should we cover him at all? He doesn't even have policies like ted Cruz does.

 

LEONHARDT: Because I think in a democracy you have to take seriously what the public is interested in. Donald Trump came out and said he is running for president, and as Donald Trump would be the first to tell you, he is leading the polls.

 

BROOKE: But as we know at this point in the campaign, polling is just fodder for generating headlines. They're familiarity meters, the sample size is too small, the public's not close to forming an opinion that has any relevance to the election.

 

LEONHARDT: Polls are not totally meaningless at this point. Traditionally the person who will ultimately become president isn't necessarily leading the polls at this point, the person who's actually the leader is irrelevant. But they're up there in the polls. The way that flash in the pan candidacies end up flaming out is in part through media scrutiny. Someone announces they're running for president, they prove skillful at saying things that attract interest, they start to do well in the polls, then they start to get more scrutiny, both from the media and from other people in their party.

 

BROOKE: So you're saying he should be covered in order to accelerate the flame out process?

 

LEONHARDT: I don't think he should be covered in order to accelerate the flame out process, I think the way to think about it is that traditionally when unserious candidates run for the candidacy, when people who have no record of having a policy agenda that people actually want followed. One of the ways in which their candidacies flame out is precisely by this scrutiny.

 

BROOKE: Using as the object lesson Herman Cain.

 

LEONHARDT: That's right. Herman Cain also surged in the polls, began to get scrutiny, past cases of sexual harassment involving him came out and within a few months his candidacy was over. And I think we see some of the beginning of that with Trump. The accusations from his wife at the time that he violently assaulted her, doesn't mean his poll numbers are going to change immediately. But I think that we're in the early stages of this. The mistake that people make is that they imagine that the media is more powerful than it really is.

 

BROOKE: And I agree with you there, but with regard to likening what happened to Herman Cain to Donald Trump that is truly apples and oranges. He's not going to surprise us with more knowledge of his character in the way that Herman Cain was an unknown did.

 

LEONHARDT: That's true. Trump is no Herman Cain. It is still the case that the attention and scrutiny that will be brought to the campaign will painfully alter the number of Republicans who say that Donald Trump is their first choice for president. I think it's worth thinking of what's the alternative here. Is the alternative really that the media should get together and should say hey this guy is leading the polls, but we don't think he's serious and we should totally ignore him?

 

BROOKE: So, how many stories about Trump are right to paraphrase the prune ad, are three too few or twelve too many?

 

LEONHARDT: One of the things that we should be doing in addition to digging through his dispositions we should be asking what policie s does he actually favor. If you look at his political donations over his history, he's given a lot of money to people who are way to the left of the electorate. We should say what is Donald Trump actually believe in, if he is president what would he want to do.

 

BROOKE: He says what he would do. He would go to Iran and get a better deal. He would keep rapists from Mexico out of the US. HE would not support losers like war heroes that got shot down. Things like that.

 

LEONHARDT: Yes. there's a lot of magical thinking there, right. And do you think this is also a role for the debates to play. You will see some of the other candidates call him to account.

 

BROOKE: Speaking of the debate, it'll happen on Thursday on Fox but the main primetime event will include only the top 10 polling candidates. Here's tape of South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham who's not likely to make it onto the mainstage.

 

GRAHAM: CNN and Fox have come up with a criteria that I think is silly. If my numbers go up it's because I call Donad Trump a jackass..

 

LEONHARDT:I think the Senator's on to something. If you look at this Republican field, set aside what you think for a minute of his proposals. This is an enormoulsy qualified field for a president. We have a multiple term gvovernor of Florida and Wisconsin and New Jersey, we have senators from all over the country, we have people who have repeatedly shown that they are suppported by large numbers of Americans and the idea that we could end up having a debate excluding some of these folks, including the governor of Ohio does strike me as porblmeatic.

 

BROOKE: What about Graham's other point that he might get a bump in the polls for calling Trump a bad name, just like Huckabee may very well be getting a bump in the polls because he's been saying outrageous things not least among them that signing this IRan deal is the same thing as devliering Israelis to the ovens at Auschwitz. What's it say about us that these provocations gain people poll numbers?

 

LEONHARDT: I think if you want to look for some small read of optimisim, it's that there has never been a golden age of political discourse in America. And our democracy is more successful than any other democracy in the history of the world. On the plus side we don't have politicians killing each other which is what we had in the 18th century.

 

BROOKE: On the plus side we don't have politicians killing each other?

 

LEONHARDT: Well I guess my point is what is the era of political discourse that we wish to return to?

 

BROOKE: An era that wasn't ruled by the filibuster, when people of good will could legimiately disagree. And find compromise.

 

LEONHARDT: I agree there are really serious problems today and I agree that it's not entirely clear that we have a political system that is up to the challenge of dealin gwith weak economic growth, rising inequality, climate change and a whole bunhc of other really serious problems.

 

BROOKE: So you don' tthink this coverage of Trump is the collapse of civilization as we know it, that's probly already happened.

 

LEONHARDT:Yes. If you have been seeing Donald Trump for as long as I've been seeing him, there's no way to conclude that the last few weeks are the collapse of civilization. Either the collapse of civilization has already happened or we're not there yet.

 

BROOKE: David thank you very much.

LEONHARDT: Thank you.

BROOKE: David Leonhardt is eidotr of the upshot.

BACK ANNOUNCE: David Leonhardt is editor of The Upshot for The New York Times.