Jim Jordan Won't Make A Scandal Of Himself

Democrats can make him one, but brace yourself for the Jim Jordan beat sweeteners

(Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

After Steve Saclise turned out not to be the hero they wanted, House Republicans will decide whether Joker Jim Jordan is the hero they need, in a speakership vote that will begin sometime after noon on Tuesday.

If Jordan manages to win that election with an outright majority, his speakership could be quite fraught, both for himself, and for many of the members who’ll vote for him knowing who he is. 

Before he became the GOP’s speaker-designate, Jordan actually lost to Scalise on the first ballot. He only lived to fight another day because his corner of crooks and MAGA devotees threatened to burn the whole place down if their guy didn’t become the nominee even in defeat. So Scalise stepped aside, and Jordan managed to turn second place into a victory of a sort, successfully overturning an election without even sacking the Capitol! But the BIG election is the one on the House floor, where all members vote, including Democrats, and because of who he is and how he sewed up the nomination, Jordan began the final leg of the race well behind.  

That was before he enlisted Donald Trump and Fox News in his whip operation. He made a lot of headway Monday, flipping detractors one by one, then marching them out to give some version of the same statement announcing they’d folded.

It’s unclear as of this writing whether he made enough headway. He goes to the floor having created an air of certainty around himself. But the whole point of that gangplank-like whip operation was to create the illusion of inevitability. You don’t need the elaborate show of force, the choreography of near identical statements from the members you’ve ground down, if you’ve got the votes lined up. You do that to make your victory seem like fait accompli—to put maximal pressure on remaining dissenters—because you know it isn’t.

But even if his plan works, the Republicans who caved have to know that Jordan would be an enormous liability for them. He’s a man best known for his decision to cover up a sex-abuse scandal at Ohio State University, then, many years later, to help organize (and then also cover up) the January 6 insurrection. Placing an insurrectionist with molestation baggage, handpicked by Donald Trump to obstruct justice, in charge of the House, second in line to the presidency, would represent a crisis in and of itself. It could also be perilous for the GOP. 

That’s why I’ve encouraged House Democrats to invite the abuse victims Jordan abandoned (and then lied about) to the visitors’ gallery during the speaker vote—they can sit next to the police officers who were injured on January 6, 2021—to accentuate the fact that the overwhelming majority of Republicans will be knowingly voting for a bad guy. Jordan won’t be a liability to his party automatically; Democrats, using opposition tactics that fix media attention onto the controversy, have to make him one, or the press will get bored and move on.  

A big Democratic push to frame Jordan’s nomination like that would, if he wins anyhow, set the right tone for the beginning of his speakership—aswirl in questions about his corruption, his phony morals, his abuses of power. It would also offset the temptation within the political press to reward Jordan with what we in the industry call “beat sweeteners.” And beat sweeteners happen to be the subject of this week’s episode of Decoding the News. We recorded this on Friday, before Jordan had made a race of it, but the insights apply as much to him as to anyone who manages to become speaker through all this dysfunction. A rough transcript is below for those of you who can’t watch or don’t enjoy video media. 

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TRANSCRIPT:

How’s this: Jimmy Jordan is the bestest most effective member of Congress, and so interesting too!

He can be my wrestling coach any day of the week!

So I obviously don’t know who the next House speaker is going to be. But sometime in the coming days? Weeks? Hopefully not before you see this anyhow—someone will be elected speaker. At least I think they will.

And that person is going to get a lot of attention from the press, including in the form of a genre known as The Beat Sweetener.

What is a beat sweetener? Well, I’ll tell you, but first let’s zoom out a little bit.

Beat sweeteners are particularly controversial forms of a larger method, also controversial, called Access Journalism.

In some ways beat sweeteners are the onramp to access journalism.

So access journalism, as many of you probably already knew, is an approach to journalism, particularly political journalism where reporters get really cozy with their sources.

This can happen subconsciously over time, you cover someone or some office long enough, you get to know the people you’re covering a little, suddenly it’s hard to keep an adversarial distance, they’re coming to you with information because they think you’ll help them, and you’re counting on them to keep you competitive with scoops.

It can also happen intentionally: You, the journalist, want some newsmaker to know who you are, think well of you, think you might be sympathetic in some sense. And so you ingratiate yourself. Maybe you even pull some punches or publish some piece that’s critical of something or someone that particular newsmaker doesn’t like. Sorry, the sausage making—it can be a little gross.

Let me interrupt here to say, as bad as it sounds, access journalism isn’t just about cynicism or ambition. It can be useful. Particularly if it’s only one tool in the reporter toolkit.

Because the flip side of being a little too credulous here and there on the way to access is…you’re there when important shit happens, when things go wrong, or when something that isn’t supposed to be public slips out and suddenly BAM, you can trade in all that access for a big, important story.

The Trump years were a feeding frenzy of access journalism for a number of reasons, and it was often really poorly concealed and gross.

At least, that’s what sources close to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner tell me.

But it was also kind of inevitable. The Trump administration was filled with warring factions, power-drunk cynics, a whole festival of backbiters with bad motives.

So they’d just talk. They’d share things that other administrations would think way better of saying. And they’d dole out exclusive information, some of it true, a lot of it bullshit, to jockey for position within their own workplace. And so journalists were there to receive it.

And then they were able to paint damning portraits of a dysfunctional, incompetent White House.

So it’s a transaction. It can be a positive-sum thing…or it can be zero sum. The journalist with access wins, the rest of us lose. And the problem is journalists aren’t always the best judges of their own…transactionality. Like all humans they can convince themselves that something they’re doing for selfish reasons is actually for the greater good.

Which brings us to beat sweeteners!

Beat sweeteners are step one of this process. It’s kinda like bringing a fruit basket to a new neighbor, except it’s because your neighbor has a pool and you want to swim in their pool.

And you’ll find them all over mainstream news media whenever some flashy new politician emerges on the scene or an underdog candidate launches a presidential campaign. OR, when someone goes from being a relative nobody to becoming Speaker of the House.

Anything like that happens and it serves as like a bat signal to certain kinds of political reporters: Call that person up, show up at their office, get some interviews done, and start working on a soft-touch profile. Then, after it runs, and paints them in a good light, they’ll be grateful and—maybe, hopefully—they’ll feel like they owe you one.

It’s the opposite of a hatchet job. It’s thinly disguised flattery. And it happens every time someone reaches the threshold of new power and influence.

These run everywhere, but they’re particularly tempting to hyper-beltway focused rags and newsletters—you know, the outlets that really thrive on being up powerful people’s asses all the time?

And so my humble prediction is, you’ll be treated to a few beat sweeteners in the coming weeks or months. Just as soon as Republicans get their act together and make the Great Jimmy Jordan the next House speaker.

Mmm the beat. It’s so sweet.