George H.W. Bush was the first American president to have an e-mail address. Bill Clinton presided over the beginning of the official White House website and the internet going from a technology for hobbyists to a part of mainstream western culture. Under George W. Bush, the internet went from common to indispensable. And Barack Obama galvanized young voters via Web 2.0 along the way to his historic victory in the 2008 election.
Presidents 41 through 44 were users of the internet, of somewhat
varying degrees but definitionally so. But by the modern standard that has been
established over the last 43 months, Donald Trump is truly the first Online
president.
There is a different between being online and being Online. Being online is, overall, a strength. It
suggests an intellectual curiosity and a basic desire to be aware of the world
beyond your very immediate social circles. Being Online reduces the potential
of the internet to its basic id-fueled level, one where all of recorded history
is at your fingertips but where the most grandiose function you can conjure is aligning
this data in a way designed to blindly benefit you.
A popular canard during both the 2016 and 2020 Democratic
presidential primaries was that Bernie Sanders was the candidate of Online. “Online”
is usually defined as “what’s being said on Twitter”, a social medium used by less than one-fourth
of American adults, and since the demographics of Twitter skew young and politically
left, it makes sense to assume a kinship with Bernie Sanders, the furthest left
candidate among the Democratic field in either of his presidential runs.
Sanders is, indeed, more popular and discussed on Twitter
than he is in most places. He is a man, after all, who has two Twitter accounts
(@SenSanders and @BernieSanders) which each have more followers than the Democratic
vice president who semi-handily defeated him for the party’s nomination in
2020, Joe Biden. But Bernie Sanders is not a particularly Online person. He is
a 78 year-old man who has been a member of Congress since three years before
Netscape launched. He has used the internet as a way to exponentially grow his
grassroots movements, not as a central tenet of his political identity.
Younger Congressional lefties, most famously New York
congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, have a more compelling argument to being
truly Online than Sanders. But while Ocasio-Cortez’s political strategy is far
more overtly centered around the internet (the 30 year-old first-term
representative already has 95% of the Twitter following of Biden and speaks the
language of the social media-savvy millennial fluently), she is still, at her
core, a professional politician. She serves on two committees, four
sub-committees, and while her use of social media has been noted, Ocasio-Cortez
has been notable as a retail politician who has made campaign appearances
across the country.
Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election has
been hindsighted to death, as political experts have bent over backwards to
explain why the 46% of American voters who voted for Trump are reflective of a
sort of silent majority (one so silent that it does not even represent a
majority). “Twitter isn’t real life” became the sentiment, one that anybody who
had followed the 2016 Democratic primaries and its end result could have easily
identified. To note that the internet creates various echo chambers that are
misleading about American political culture is not only fair, but it is
necessary. But it comes bundled with an implication that Donald Trump is a man
who rises above it, rather than a man obsessed with Online.
While Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is somewhat Online and Bernie
Sanders has occasional touches of it, the actual current Democratic nominee for
president is decidedly Not Online. While Joe Biden has the requisite social
media feeds, he is also a political lifer. He became a congressman the same
month that Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” and Stevie Wonder “Superstition”
topped the American pop charts, and his attitudes often show it, for better or
worse. Unlike Barack Obama, the man whose presidency made the twice-failed primary
candidate Biden’s eventual successful run possible, Joe Biden does not seem to
have any interest in becoming a cultural ombudsman. As irritating as I can find
Biden’s political passivity, that is one thing I appreciate about him. And it
fits Biden’s pitch to America—that he is a decent but fairly boring but most
importantly serious man who understands how politics works.
The 2020 Democratic National Convention was as typical as a
convention centered around Zoom could be. A host of ex-presidents, notable current
politicians, and 2020 Democratic primary candidates spoke, while COVID-19 first
responders and other non-controversial civilians gave testimonies to the
character of the candidate. On Thursday, Joe Biden’s speech, perhaps buoyed by
low expectations, was effective, but it was hardly transformative. This wasn’t
Barack Obama giving his 2008 acceptance speech at a football stadium in Denver.
It was a guy who doesn’t really care for public speaking trying to speak from
the heart.
The 2020 Republican National Convention began tonight with
Charlie Kirk, the 26 year-old student organizer who is a favorite among older
conservatives. This may not seem like a great sign for Republicans promoting
themselves as the adults in the room, but while Kirk might be more of a mascot
than an actual influencer (Charlie Kirk doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page,
come on), he is at the very least a political communicator who has reached his
current level in life through his ability to resonate with some people. I may
not be one of those people, but I also recognize that I am not the target
demographic.
Tonight, the speaker docket included Mark and Patricia
McCloskey. If you know who these people are by name, like I do, you are probably
rather Online. If you don’t, you aren’t alone.
The McCloskeys rose to some level of internet fame two
months ago when the married couple clumsily “defended” their house against
Black Lives Matter protesters in a wealthy St. Louis neighborhood. When
pictures of the two began to make the rounds on social media, they initially
tried to claim support for the Black Lives Matter movement, but once
conservative talk media started to call, they either dropped the façade or
simply embraced the grift. The McCloskeys are a truly Online phenomenon—both are
still gainfully employed, and while the two were charged with unlawful use of a
weapon, there is almost no chance the two ever see any punishment (as an aside,
while I find the McCloskeys obnoxious, I do not particularly care if they do).
But the McCloskeys got made fun of a whole bunch of Twitter
for a couple days, which in the eyes of a particularly privileged type of
voter, is the absolute worst thing that could happen to a person in 2020. This
type of person, however, is almost certainly not a swing voter. While leftists
were annoyed at the presence of John Kasich at last week’s DNC speaking in
support of Joe Biden, there is a fairly obvious reason why—while the Never
Trump Republican faction was never as big as its members want the public to
believe it is, it does exist, and guys like Kasich who are somewhat
conservative but are also rigorously norms-adherent are very much up for grabs.
Millionaires who point guns at protesters and become internet pariahs are statistically
insignificant. But in the eyes of Online, they are important figures.
The McCloskeys are not significant people. There is nothing
heroic about them—even at the most generous interpretation of them, they are a
couple of people who felt compelled to defend their property against potential destruction,
no shots were fired, and the world continued on, same as it ever was. But they
represent the concerns of a deeply Online president. There are hundreds of Republican
congresspeople who will not participate in the Republican National Convention, and
yet the sole participants in it from a state that has two Republican Senators
and a Republican governor are the focus of memes.
When I was growing up, young people were told that the
internet wasn’t real life. We still are, even as my generation is firmly in its
late twenties to mid-thirties. It turns out that wasn’t the case.
