‘What readers deserve’: a political profile that looks far beyond spin

Episode transcript

Gail Chaddock: It took Kevin McCarthy a record 15 rounds to convince his raucous caucus to vote him in as House speaker. As the failed votes piled up, so did the ridicule and the conviction, especially among those who explained it all to the rest of us, that it was all about humiliation and chaos.

But what if that consensus was wrong?

Christa Case Bryant, the Monitor’s senior congressional correspondent, took her reporting out of Washington to Bakersfield, California, where Kevin McCarthy grew up and still lives today. Christa is a return guest on this show, having spoken most recently about new possibilities for common ground on climate change. Today she’s talking about how her reporting in Bakersfield challenged Washington stereotypes about McCarthy. Since Christa wrote this story, a victory no one expected suggests that the new speaker may have capacities that many missed.

[MUSIC]

This is “Why We Wrote This.” I’m this week’s guest host, Gail Chaddock. I used to cover Congress for the Monitor, and greatly admire the spirit of Christa’s writing on this beat. Sometimes you can try to edit fairness into a story by cutting a few words here or there, adding a perspective or two. But sometimes a spirit of fairness drives the reporting. I’m guessing it’s why she wrote this story. Welcome, Christa.

Christa Case Bryant: Great to be with you, Gail. And I’m just so grateful for the way that you’ve exemplified the spirit of fairness and always encouraged me and other colleagues to understand where members of Congress are coming from.

Chaddock: Appreciated that. Last week, the House passed a bill raising the national debt limit. It’s a bill no one thought could pass a Republican house, let alone a deeply divided Republican caucus, on the watch of a speaker no one thought could govern. And it passed with no votes to spare, which usually signals intense behind-the-scenes negotiation and a speaker who can count. Christa, what led you to see even the possibility of success when you wrote this profile?

Case Bryant: Well, I actually didn’t set out to figure out whether McCarthy would succeed or not. I just sort of wanted to understand who he was, and where he was coming from. And I know it’s always so valuable to get outside of Washington and see a place for yourself. So I really wanted to go out to Bakersfield where he had grown up, that’s the city he represents now in Congress, along with the surrounding Kern County. And it’s a really hard-working city. It’s at the tip of the Central Valley, which is a huge area for agriculture in the U.S. So that’s a big part of it. As is oil. And they have big city problems, like a lot of crime and the schools aren’t doing too well. There’s also significant poverty, but there’s also a small town feel that I don’t think I would’ve really understood unless I’d gone out there. And of course, there’s a lot of pride in Kevin McCarthy.

And a clear theme came through all the different interviews I had, which is that this is a guy who, ever since he was in grade school, just had a real talent for connecting with people, bringing them together and doing something great, whether that was winning a football game or helping constituents connect with a bureaucrat in Washington who could solve their problems.

And, um, he’s also a son of a firefighter, so that’s someone who really knows about leading people into infernos, which is sort of what he’s doing now in Congress. And you know, I hear stories about how, “Oh, you know, Kevin met me at 5:30 in the morning. And we went out all day to talk to farmers, and we didn’t get back till one in the morning. And I was exhausted and he was still going strong.” You know, so to them, he’s a guy who’s amiable, who’s hardworking, who’s determined. And I doubt any of them were surprised that he passed the debt limit bill.

Chaddock: One of the things I admired about your story was that you used only sources you named. This notion of “speaking on condition of anonymity to speak freely” can sometimes actually be speaking on condition of anonymity to undermine a rival. But readers don’t know that. So often, it’s the unattributed source that’s the most colorful and interesting one, and [it’s] hard to resist putting it in a story. I admire the fact that you didn’t. How do you decide how to deal with unattributed material and who to actually quote in your story?

Case Bryant: First of all, I think it’s really important to note that sometimes anonymous sources can provide really valuable information. But you’re right, they can also use that shield of anonymity to hide motivations that are really important for readers to understand in order to weigh what they’re saying. So in principle, I think readers deserve to understand a source’s potential conflicts of interest or their motivations for criticizing someone. And sometimes it’s just not possible to provide enough context while also providing anonymity. And so if I can’t provide the context, then I’d rather not use the anonymous source.

But I think it’s also important for readers to understand there’s often many more people that a reporter will talk to than the ones who are actually quoted in the story. So I had a number of off-the-record conversations with people that were really helpful in shaping the story and providing important context.

I did feel like it was important to note the many criticisms of McCarthy in this piece in order to help people understand that perspective. But I didn’t wanna have, here are his cheerleaders out in Bakersfield, and here are all the people that hate him in Washington, because I wanted it to really be grounded in where he comes from. So I reached out to about half a dozen people in California, and I was only able to get two of them to talk to me. And one of those just didn’t want to be involved in the story at all. And I actually really respected that individual’s reasons for not wanting to be involved. So I managed to keep this person on the phone for about 25 minutes and our conversation provided helpful context.

Chaddock: Public figures have various ways of dealing with criticism. I love the comment that you quoted high up in the story. “We have always been underestimated,” McCarthy told you. Late-night comedians ridiculed McCarthy’s explanations of that very long count for speaker, using terms like “humiliation,” “desperation,” “chaos.” How did longtime associates, people who knew him, you know, at the creation view that speakership vote?

Case Bryant: One conversation I remember in particular was with Vince Fong, who had started as an intern in a congressional office that McCarthy also worked in. And then McCarthy sort of mentored him over the years and convinced him to come back to politics and be his, run his first campaign for Congress and then become his district director for nearly a decade.

And so, Fong’s point was: Everybody’s focusing on the small group of people who didn’t wanna support McCarthy and kept forcing all of these repeat votes, and nobody was looking at the huge group of people that McCarthy had pulled together, and who stuck with him through all of those 15 votes.

And he used a metaphor that he said, to him, like, best explains what McCarthy’s doing and how he operates. So apparently when they were working together, McCarthy spent several months training to do the 22 mile hike up Mount Whitney in California, which is the tallest peak in the lower 48. And he brought Fong and a few other guys with him. And they left at 3 in the morning. You know, it was a pretty arduous hike. Took a lot of planning. And to Fong, that’s emblematic of how McCarthy wants to bring people together to do great things and not just get to the top himself, but bring others with him. And you know, the cynical Washington view would be: “Oh, well, that’s just desperate spin on the speakership vote, or what McCarthy’s doing.” And that may be true, but I felt like it’s really up to the readers to decide. So I wanted to provide both of those views as faithfully and accurately as I could, and then hope that that would enable readers to come to their own informed decision.

Chaddock: You know, I really like that point, and I hadn’t thought about it myself: there was so much focus on the handful of votes that he needed to win and not as much on all the people that stuck with him.

It can be perilous to write a profile that you know is gonna be at odds with the consensus view among your professional colleagues. Comments that are too positive can look like a puff piece. Christa, how did you get beyond the stereotypes in your reporting?

Case Bryant: Well, I think a key stereotype was summed up in the opening line of an op-ed that appeared in Politico last summer, and it said: “Is Kevin McCarthy a great big dummy?”

Chaddock: Subtle!

Case Bryant: And that’s a question or a sense that I’d sort of picked up on as a new reporter in Congress. And I was curious, you know: if all these veteran reporters have that sense and they’re really right, well, how did he become speaker? And if they’re missing something, then I was really curious to understand more.

Hearing about what people in Bakersfield appreciated and how they were judging McCarthy provided a really helpful view. And a theme that came up over and over again was his ability to create a team and help them excel. It was just so at odds with the prevailing narrative in Washington about who he is. 

One thing that I really strive for as a political reporter is fairness. And that often requires getting outside of echo chambers, and really being willing to grapple with nuance and being willing to challenge prevailing narratives. And to me that’s really central to the Monitor’s mission. It’s something we’ve done for a long time. But it goes beyond just “he said, she said.” You know, it’s making an honest, good-faith effort to understand someone’s full character in all its complexity. And The Christian Science Monitor’s founder, Mary Baker Eddy, knew firsthand what it was like to be on the receiving end of journalism that didn’t do that, since she rose to prominence in America at a time when yellow journalism was really in full swing. But rather than use her newly established paper to get back at her critics, she wrote in the very first edition that the Monitor’s object would be “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” So that’s pretty extraordinary.

Chaddock: Pretty extraordinary then and now, I would say.

Case Bryant: Yes.

Chaddock: I remember a Monitor editor when I first went over to France to write. Not only was the language not my strongest suit, but all of the intrigue and the history that’s so important in French politics. Anyway, I was very nervous about this. And he said, “you know, there’s one advantage you have that I don’t think you realized: you have fresh eyes.” And that’s something which over time, journalists can lose. I think that editor was right.

In Bakersfield, McCarthy is “our Kevin.” But former President Trump refers to him as “my Kevin.” Some who knew him well were disappointed that McCarthy “failed to demonstrate leadership in the critical days after January 6th.” How did you decide to handle the Trump factor in this profile?

Case Bryant: Well, I’ll come back to January 6th in a minute, but I just wanna back up a little bit before that. As I alluded to earlier, McCarthy comes from a place where many of the drivers of Trump’s success have been present for a while. A lot of people in Kern County feel somewhere between forgotten and attacked by the California state government, and to a certain extent by the federal government. I mean, there’s a lot of regulations on agriculture, and particularly water, and oil, that have made things pretty tough for them there. Then there are other factors too. I mean, this is a place where there’s a lot of grievance politics, in the perspective of some. And so all of that probably helped McCarthy to see the rising tide of Trumpism, maybe even before Trump got elected. And he actually wasn’t a huge fan of Trump’s. If you look at his speech in the 2016 Republican National Convention, he talked a lot more about the Republican national agenda than Trump. But he came to embrace Trump as an indispensable ally in the White House, which many fault him for, particularly after what happened on January 6th. And in fact, that’s probably the No. 1 criticism I heard of him, that he gave the speech on the house floor just a week after the attack on the Capitol, saying that Trump bore responsibility for the mob violence that day. And then two weeks later, he’s on a plane down to Mar-a-Lago to see Trump in what his critics referred to as “going to kiss the ring.” And I had to tackle that head on. But I also wanted to understand how that looked through the lens of his supporters who had talked about him as a man who had long prioritized relationships and would never give up on anybody. And also what even his critics acknowledge is an extraordinarily good ability to understand where the base of the Republican party is and be ready to follow that.

Adam Kinzinger, a Republican congressman whom McCarthy had recruited, said he had “special disdain for McCarthy after he went to Mar-a-Lago.” That’s a quote from a Time article last summer. And, you know, Kinzinger took a really strong stand by impeaching Trump and then serving on the January 6th committee, and he’s now out of Congress. And so is Liz Cheney, who took a similar approach. And I think one thing that I’d be interested in examining further going forward is how much did people like Cheney and Kinzinger actually limit Trump’s influence, either on the party or on the country, and how much influence are they going to have over that going forward now that they’re no longer in Congress because the positions they took were not popular with Republicans in their district.

And then you could ask the same question of McCarthy’s choices: has he had a greater ability to influence Trump because he has stayed engaged with him. And is that just a net benefit for Trump, or is that helpful for the Republican party in some way? I’m sure a lot of people are interested in whether it’s helpful for McCarthy and his personal goals or ambitions. So I was only able really to touch on that in this piece. But certainly Trump’s influence on the party and what top leaders are weighing, um, in terms of how to relate to him and to the base and to their broader goals as a party is just a very rich area to delve into.

Chaddock: That’s a great point. McCarthy did speak at the Republican Convention. And we sometimes forget that that convention was just no shows all the way through party ranks, especially leadership. So the idea that he would’ve gone at all was remarkable.

Case Bryant: Hmm.

Chaddock: You know, the decision to end the story not with the predictions of failure – [as] everyone else did – but with something else. You are quoting Annette Lunquist, the president of Bakersfield Republican women, and she says: “It’s not the words politicians speak, it’s the deeds they perform that count with me. And Kevin does that all the time.” I realize this, the decision of what ends a story sometimes isn’t yours exclusively. But how do you feel about ending this profile on a note like that?

Case Bryant: I would say picking the zinger quote, as we call it, the last quote in a piece, is maybe one of the most important and difficult decisions in terms of having a piece come across as fair. Because that quote just carries so much weight. If you haven’t already bored your readers and they stopped reading the piece a long time ago, if they make it to the zinger quote, you know, that’s what’s gonna leave maybe the biggest impression in their mind. And so you want it to be a really strong quote, but often the strong quotes are strong on one side or the other. And so my editor and I did have a conversation about that. There was another quote we were considering for that placement. And um, we ended up going with this one.

It is strong and it is very supportive of McCarthy, but what I like about it is the beginning of the piece was very rooted in Bakersfield. It gave you a sense of the city, the people who are coming to support him at this fundraising dinner. This is a really nice bookend to that. And I think that gives the piece a lot of authenticity and reminds people: this is the view from Bakersfield that’s supposed to help you understand where Kevin McCarthy is coming from.

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Chaddock: Christa, thank you for joining us today, and thank you for your work.

Case Bryant: Thank you for your work, and it’s such a pleasure to hear your perspective on politics. Thank you so much for being with us today.

Chaddock: And to our listeners, thanks for listening. You can find our show notes, with links to this story and more of Christa’s work at CSMonitor.com/WhyWeWroteThis. This episode is hosted by me, Gail Chaddock, edited and produced by Clay Collins and Jingnan Peng. Alyssa Britton was our engineer, with original music by Noel Flatt. Produced by the Christian Science Monitor. Copyright 2023.