Our nation just went through the extraordinary experience of a sitting President of the United States dropping out of his bid for reelection based in large part on the reaction to a disastrous debate performance. The issue was not so much that the American people did not agree with what the President was trying to articulate but that the President had a very difficult time even forming a coherent sentence in answer to the questions asked of him. This withdrawal was not at the early stages when candidates “test the waters” or even during the first series of primaries, this was after all the primaries had taken place and the President had amassed the necessary delegates to assure himself the nomination. Truly amazing.
What I think the American people have to ask themselves is how is it that a candidate for the most important elected office in the whole world can go through a whole cycle of primaries and essentially win the nomination and then have their candidacy implode in a matter of an hour or so when exposed unfiltered to the voting public? How is it that President Joe Biden was seen as fit to be the President of the Untied States of America until the people of the United States of America were able to judge his ability to answer questions firsthand? How is it that those who sent President Biden out onto that stage did not realize how the American people would react?
The answer, in my opinion, lies in the fact that too many of those who the American people rely on to provide us with information about our candidates and the serious issues facing our nation have lost the ability to accurately and objectively gather and report on those candidates and issues. Our popular political media has been consumed by their own sense of advocacy that they are blinded to the weaknesses in their own arguments. Loyalty has overcome objectivity and being a zealot has overcome being credible for far too many, on all sides.
The inability of a decision maker to be able to at least make an effort to be fair and objective when weighing evidence is a dangerous situation. To illustrate my point, here are a few examples from my own experience as a criminal defense attorney.
For about thirteen years after becoming an attorney I had my own private practice. The percentage fluctuated over time but probably from one third to two thirds of my practice each year was representing those charged with criminal offences. The vast majority of those cases were court appointed, meaning that the defendants were indigent, and the court had appointed me to represent them. The defendant had not chosen me and for all practical purposes I could not be fired.
If you are a conscientious criminal defense attorney, and I tried to be, your job is to evaluate the evidence to see if the State can or cannot prove its case. Can the State prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crime he or she was charged with? In this situation the defense attorney must be reasonable and objective to truly represent the interests of his client. If I misjudge and tell the defendant to go to trial because I think the defendant will be found “not guilty” and the defendant is found “guilty,” I’ve not served the defendant well. Likewise, if I misjudge and tell the defendant not to go to trial because I believe the defendant will be found “guilty” and the defendant would not have been found “guilty,” I also would not have served the defendant well, or the interests of justice either. Looking at evidence objectively is a skill to be developed and it is a skill no one has perfected, but it is a very useful talent to try to develop.
Only a small percentage of cases ever went to a jury trial but in those cases that did and the defendant was found “not guilty” it was almost always because the prosecutor has been blind to the obvious weaknesses in the State’s own case. The prosecutor had become an advocate for a conviction, and not an advocate for the truth, and therefore the prosecutor had misjudged how the jury would view the evidence. The prosecutor had become blind to the weaknesses in his own arguments. The prosecutor, and the State, had lost credibility.
When we lose the ability to objectively view evidence because of our advocacy for a particular position we overreach. When we overreach, we typically stumble and fall. A few examples will illustrate the point.
In the first case, the defendant had been charged with felonious assault. The alleged victim testified that the defendant and another man had knocked him down on a gravel driveway and punched and kicked him with steel toed boots for five to ten minutes. The defendant testified the alleged victim was drunk, which the alleged victim admitted. The alleged victim became belligerent and tried to push his way into the room the defendant was in and the defendant slammed the door on him. The prosecutor showed the jury a picture of the alleged victim lying in a hospital bed right after the incident and read from the medical records. That picture clearly showed the alleged victim’s arms and face. The only visible injury was a black eye. There was not a single scratch or bruise on the rest of his body, including his arms which were clearly visible. The medical records made no mention of any scratches or bruising anywhere on the man’s body. I only needed to show the jury that picture and ask them if it looked like a man who was knocked down on a gravel driveway and punched and kicked by two men with steel toed boots for 5 to 10 minutes to get the “not guilty” verdict.
In the second case, the defendant had been charged with felonious assault against his wife. The wife testified that she came home from work and her husband was drunk and he attacked her. She testified that he grabbed her with both hands around the neck and dragged her around the house while strangling her for about 30 minutes, to the point where she heard a crack in her neck and passed out. The prosecutor again entered into evidence a photograph of the wife’s supposed injuries taken by the police shortly after the incident. The police report itself and the police officer’s testimony was that there were no visible injuries to her neck. The photo the prosecutor put into evidence showed no injuries, not even any redness, but it did show a very delicate and completely intact gold necklace that the wife was wearing around her neck during the alleged attack. Again, during my closing arguments I only needed to show the jury the picture of the wife’s neck, and that delicate little gold necklace around her neck, and ask them if the evidence they could see with their own two eyes fit the story that they were being asked to believe. The jury found the husband “not guilty.”
In both cases, what the jury could see with their own two eyes did not match what they were being told to believe.
An advocate losing their credibility because they lose the ability to discern fact from fiction is a dangerous thing. Sometimes an advocate will be advocating for the truth but will have no credibility because they have lost it advocating for things which are not true. Hence many of those who reported that President Biden was severely diminished prior to him walking on the debate stage that fateful night.
We expect the candidates and their teams to be advocates in the upcoming presidential election, but we need and deserve advocates that at least make some effort to be objective and balanced. We need sources of information that can be relied upon and have a history of at least trying to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Especially in our popular political media.