Before Donald Trump became president, most newspaper op-ed pages sought to present a spectrum of politically significant opinion and argument, which they could largely do while walling off extremist propaganda and incitement. The Trump presidency has undermined that model, because there’s generally no way to defend the administration without being either bigoted or dishonest.
Opinion sections, eager to maintain ideological diversity without publishing lies or stuff that belongs in Breitbart, have therefore filled up with anti-Trump conservatives. As a result, newspapers like this one have often been criticized for elevating an intellectual clique that has little mass base or political influence.
So I can sort of appreciate my bosses’ decision on Wednesday to run Senator Tom Cotton’s screed arguing that the military should be sent to American cities to “restore order,” which has caused a rebellion inside The New York Times. The Times Opinion section wants to include the views of people who support Trump, and the very qualities that make Cotton’s Op-Ed revolting — his strongman pretensions, his sneering apocalypticism — make him an important figure in Trump’s Republican Party. (He might someday come to lead it.)
