
 
 John Harris, left, editor in chief of Politico, and Jim VandeHei, Politico executive editor, speak to advertisers in Arlington, Va., on Jan. 19, 2007. (Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press) 
 
 Over the past few months and years, the hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts has tried to make a few useful suggestions for improving the quality of punditry during this campaign season. For example: 
 
 Don’t use Donald Trump as a vehicle for your particular hobbyhorse — you’ll just get tarnished. Don’t call for a military leader on horseback to rescue the country — the ones interested in the job are probably the last ones who should be president. Don’t use Silicon Valley buzzwords to describe anything with respect to politics or policy — it means those words have been played out. Don’t assume Americans care too much about foreign policy or national security. They don’t. Don’t call for a third-party candidate to enter the race because: (a) that candidate won’t win, and (b) even if the candidate wins, the new president still needs to cope with a Congress that will remain a product of the two-party system. 
 
 To be fair, I never actually wrote that last point up, mostly because I thought it was so obvious that it did not need to be said out loud. 
 
 I bring this up because Politico co-founder Jim VandeHei’s Wall Street Journal op-ed manages to ignore all of these warnings. Praising the plain language of Donald Trump? Check. References to disruption? Check. Calls for an “Innovation Party?” Check. VandeHei also leans hard on the “Normal America vs. D.C. bubble” trope, which will be a topic for another column. 
 
 Today, however, Spoiler Alerts would like to focus on VandeHei’s yearning for a military leader to set things right: 
 
 Exploit the fear factor. The candidate should be from the military or immediately announce someone with modern-warfare expertise or experience as running mate. People are scared. Terrorism is today’s World War and Americans want a theory for dealing with it. President Obama has established an intriguing precedent of using drone technology and intelligence to assassinate terrorists before they strike. A third-party candidate could build on death-by-drones by outlying the type of modern weapons, troops and war powers needed to keep America safe. And make plain when he or she will use said power. Do it with very muscular language — there is no market for nuance in the terror debate. 
 
 There are many, many things wrong with that paragraph. But ignore the “scare Americans and use force at will” rhetoric for a few paragraphs. Do you know who would fit VandeHei’s bill perfectly? Retired four-star admiral William McRaven. Former Navy SEAL. Former JSOC commander. Current chancellor of the University of Texas system. Architect of the Osama bin Laden raid. 
 
 Even better, it seems as though McRaven is ready to enter the political fray. Except that, as my Washington Post colleague Craig Whitlock notes, McRaven’s latest political intervention is … somewhat problematic: 
 
 [McRaven] made clear that he was angry at the Senate for its treatment of Rear Adm. Brian L. Losey, the commander in charge of the Navy’s elite SEAL teams and other commando units. Losey, who formerly served under McRaven, was denied promotion last month and is being forced to retire after several senators from both parties pressured the Navy to hold him accountable for retaliating against multiple whistleblowers. … McRaven’s description of Losey as an innocent victim is at odds with the findings of the Defense Department’s inspector general, which concluded that he had repeatedly violated whistleblower-protection laws. … Had he stopped there, McRaven’s comments probably would not have attracted much public attention. Instead, he went on to slam lawmakers and question whether a fundamental underpinning of the American system of government — civilian control of the military — was frayed or at risk. “The greater concern for America is the continued attack on leadership in the military,” he wrote. “During my past several years in uniform, I watched in disbelief how lawmakers treated the chairman, the service chiefs, the combatant commanders and other senior officers during Congressional testimony. These officers were men of incredible integrity, and yet some lawmakers showed no respect for their decades of service.” 
 
 So the poster boy for VandeHei’s new leadership is … a recently retired admiral who challenges civilian control of the military. I would be uncomfortable with this person in charge of determining the proper allocation of war powers between the different branches of government. By exploiting the fear factor. 
 
 Enough with the op-eds that search for magical solutions to existing problems. Can we see some op-eds that address how to restore trust in Congress? Because that is the underlying problem that enables McRaven or VandeHei to go on these rants. ||||| I have spent the past two decades in the Washington, D.C., bubble—the heart of Establishment America—covering politics and building a company, Politico, focused solely on politics. But I’ve also spent a lot of time in my hometown of Oshkosh, Wis., and my adopted hometown of Lincoln, Maine, two blue-collar towns in the heart of Normal America. 
 
 Here are my two big takeaways: Normal America is right that Establishment America has grown fat, lazy, conventional and deserving of radical disruption. And the best, perhaps only way... ||||| Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Elle 
 
 In Tuesday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal, Jim VandeHei, the former CEO of Politico who left to start a still-mysterious new venture, has written one of the more clueless and despicable op-eds I have read from a current or former journalist. That it manages to be at once both sinister and utterly banal is its signal achievement. 
 
 Isaac Chotiner Isaac Chotiner is a Slate staff writer. 
 
 VandeHei’s piece is ostensibly a common man’s plea for a responsible third party—one that would depart from the potential third-party paths laid out by Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. In this and in this alone, it differs little from the Beltway pundits’ quadrennial exercise in hyperventilation over the prospect of a third-party candidacy. But VandeHei also puts forth some random and unfocused ideas that unite only around a bizarre combination of demagogy and Silicon Valley–driven innovation. Call it #Authoritarianism. 
 
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 VandeHei begins by laying out his credentials. He assures us that he actually spends lots of time in blue-collar “Normal America.” Naturally, the places he mentions as being “normal”—Lincoln, Maine, and Oshkosh, Wisconsin—are small and more than 90 percent white. From this experience, VandeHei declares that “Normal America is right”: Washington “has grown fat, lazy, conventional and deserving of radical disruption.” These sentences, with their lazy assumptions about Washington mingling with the TED Talkese, achieve a sort of majesty in their bathos. 
 
 VandeHei then explains the problem with Sanders and Trump; one is a socialist, and the other is too vulgar, as if Trump’s language were the most offensive thing about him. VandeHei adds: “But if someone turned the critique, passion and disdain shared by the two movements into a new one, they could change the system in meaningful ways. Only an outside force can knock Washington out of its governing rut—and the presidency is the only place with the power to do it.” The rest of the piece offers a “template” for doing so. 
 
 And it’s here that the column starts rotating between the vapid and the creepy. The former comes in large doses, as VandeHei calls for “a true outsider” who will help “mandate that lawmakers … get outside of the D.C. bubble by holding months-long sessions in different sections of Normal America.” But amid this sort of dreary nonsense, VandeHei lets the mask drop here and there. “And exploit cable TV’s addiction to whatever is hot and new,” he writes. This is gross enough coming from someone in the media, but here is the next section, which is much worse, in full: 
 
 Exploit the fear factor. The candidate should be from the military or immediately announce someone with modern-warfare expertise or experience as running mate. People are scared. Terrorism is today’s World War and Americans want a theory for dealing with it. President Obama has established an intriguing precedent of using drone technology and intelligence to assassinate terrorists before they strike. A third-party candidate could build on death-by-drones by outlying the type of modern weapons, troops and war powers needed to keep America safe. And make plain when he or she will use said power. Do it with very muscular language—there is no market for nuance in the terror debate. 
 
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 For a politician to call for the exploitation of fear is one thing. For someone in the media to call for it is another. For a media personality to call for it in the midst of a campaign that has seen unprecedented levels of bigotry and xenophobia is the ultimate monument to the Politico view of politics as a mindless exercise in signaling and brand management. (The bit about the ticket having military experience is a particularly nice touch.) 
 
 Perhaps fearing that he had reached his quota of fascistophilic appeals, VandeHei returns to banality, offering up such beauties as “Use the Internet revolution for the greater good.” He then adds, “Also, call on Silicon Valley technologist [sic] to do tours of service to bring data solutions and efficiencies to our aging governmental systems.” Terrific. 
 
 You can tell where this is headed, can’t you? “Why not recruit Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg to head a third-party movement?” VandeHei writes. “Maybe we can convince Michael Bloomberg to help fund the movement with the billions he planned to spend on his own campaign—and then recruit him to run Treasury and advise the president.” So essentially the only way to fix our broken country that has been screwed over by elites is to give more authority to three of the most powerful people in the country.
– One of the co-founders of Politico makes the case that the success of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders shows that America is ready for a third-party movement. Those two have raised a "terrific middle finger" to the establishment, but neither presents a coherent governing strategy, writes Jim VandeHei in the Wall Street Journal. He wants a new party to combine the best of their movements, and even floats a name for it: the Innovation Party. VandeHei suggests someone like Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg could lead it, while Michael Bloomberg could provide financial backing and then perhaps run the Treasury. "Right now, millions of young people are turned on by a 74-old-year socialist scolding Wall Street" and "millions of others by a reality-TV star with a 1950s view of women," writes VandeHei. His ideal candidate is instead someone from outside the political system who can talk to Americans in "unvarnished" language. He or she should also be from the military or select a running mate who is, because "terrorism is today's World War." Click for his full column, which is meeting with some heated criticism. Some samples: "It takes a uniquely special mind to come up with an op-ed that is simultaneously so pointless and so perverse," writes Isaac Chotiner at Slate. He takes particular exception to VandeHei's suggestion that a candidate "exploit the fear" of Americans. "Anyone who believes we are a meritocracy should read Jim VandeHei, who somehow rose to the top of journalism world," tweets Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress. At the Washington Post, Daniel Drezner provides a critique "of an op-ed gone horribly, horribly wrong," from VandeHei's use of "Silicon Valley buzzwords" to his call for a military leader to save us all.