This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena."
Mr. Jason Chaffetz
Contributor
Fox News
Alpine, Utah
Dear Mr. Chaffetz,
Allow me to be the first to welcome you to the honorable profession of punditry. Of spouting off, finding fault and being an all-around insufferable know-it-all.
My God, it's a lot of fun.
Your membership in the Loyal Order of Nattering Nabobs has been approved and your official bile-boosting tonic and fact-repelling tinfoil hat will be arriving soon, via Amazon drone. (Unless you are pro-Trump, in which case it will arrive UPS.)
Of course, I don't need to tell you how much fun it will be to leave behind a position of real power, where you have some influence over policy and laws, in favor of a gig where, no matter how good or bad your ideas and predictions are, you bear no real responsibility for what government at any level actually does.
I don't need to tell you that because, ever since you arrived in Washington as a fresh, telegenic presence, that's what you've been doing. Criticizing, second-guessing, grandstanding, lobbing accusations that you don't have to back up, misusing statistics and demonizing those with whom you disagree. Legislating? Not so much.
Apparently, after almost five terms in the House, you figured out that doing all that on the taxpayer's dime may have been fun, but not nearly as lucrative as doing so in the outright employ of a cable TV "news" operation.
I am in no position to criticize anyone who prefers a gig sitting on the outside of the house firing in. I moved away from being a reporter to being an editorial writer and columnist a long time ago because I wasn't very good at keeping my own opinions out of my copy.
But, I would argue, intelligent, independent punditry adds a lot to the public discourse. We state and defend propositions that push people to think so they can agree or disagree, but only after they have considered various arguments. In doing that well, opinion writers and TV contributors are far more than just critics, but actual players.
Seriously, though, what passes for journalistic commentary on TV these days, and not just on Fox, is a far cry from the intellectual pedigree of William F. Buckley, Walter Lipmann, James Reston, Russell Baker, William Safire, Michael Kinsley, George F. Will and Paul Krugman. Folks who consider, explain, defend and critique complicated ideas, the stuff journalists call BBI (boring but important), with intellectual honesty and complete sentences. But also enough wit and brevity to make good television.
And here's where you can come in.
Many of the best opinion writers and talking heads have been those who may hew to an ideology but have no loyalty to any political party or personality. Buckley on the right and Kinsley on the left are among those whose major contribution has been to call out, respectively, Republicans who weren't truly conservative or Democrats who forgot to be liberal. Or who went so far off the end that they ceased to be meaningful players.
The best thing we could hear from you going forward would be your true policy and ideological ideas, ideas unburdened by any need to toe the Republican line or obligation to take a whack at the nearest Democrat.
You showed glimmers of that when you tried to make common cause with the ranking Democrat on your House Oversight Committee, each visiting the other's district, and when you momentarily withdrew your support for Donald Trump, in the wake of one of what has become a flood of crude, sexist remarks from the pervert in chief.
The real good you could do now would be to bestride the array of talking heads and come at Trump and Trumpism from the perspective of a real Utah conservative, pro-business, big on federalism, but also not without compassion for refugees and other immigrants and open to ideas that truly support families and small business.
The risk of that, of course, is that you would come across as too Utah County nice, not nasty enough to hold your own among a panel of xenophobic old people who miss the days when blacks and women knew their place, not enough of a fan of the authoritarian regimes that suddenly feel so welcome at the White House.
But it might be a good audition tape for your next run for office.
George Pyle, the Tribune's editorial page editor, is just jealous that other people get on TV more than he does. gpyle@sltrib.com