Whenever U.S. journalists lament the loss of civility in the country’s politics, I think back to my first exposure to U.S. political debate as a young kid in 1980s Canada: the rhetorical combat of the McLaughlin Group, a political talk show broadcast from a TV station on the U.S. side of the border. Even after moving to Germany, whenever I visited North America as a teenager, I’d tune in to watch the show, on which four political commentators would loudly argue with each other while, in his role as moderator, John McLaughlin—a former Catholic priest who had also been an aide to Richard Nixon—bellowed out to interrupt anyone he thought was wrong.
In the days before next week’s fateful U.S. presidential election, a closer look back at the McLaughlin Group can provide insights into what has really changed when it comes to how the U.S. media shapes politics and what has stayed the same.
At first glance, there are striking continuities linking the shouting in McLaughlin’s studio 30 years ago and the vicious partisanship of a U.S. media landscape that has fueled the rise of former President Donald Trump, this year’s Republican nominee. In contrast to the scholarly banter of NBC’s Meet the Press that shaped the tone of news coverage until the late 1970s, the McLaughlin Group’s depiction of Washington as a gladiatorial arena reflected a recognition that political debate could become a form of entertainment. By the early 1990s, the show’s confrontations between two liberal-leaning and two right-wing panelists attracted such a large viewership that comedian Dana Carvey’s merciless impersonation of McLaughlin’s cantankerous interventions became a regular feature of political satire on NBC’s iconic Saturday Night Live comedy sketch show.