TV commentator, columnist George Will opens Bucknell speaker series

Sep. 20—LEWISBURG — Touching on subjects as diverse as presidential politics, the media, and education, long-time political commentator and columnist George Will answered questions from the media prior to his Tuesday night speech at the Weis Center for the Performing Arts, on the Bucknell campus.

Will kicked off Bucknell's Forum 2023-24 speaker series on Freedom of Expression.

A conservative Republican turned independent, Will, who is no fan of Donald Trump, said "Mr. Biden is no longer equipped to be president and Kamala Harris shows no sign of ever being equipped to be president. Which a majority of Democrats seem to agree about.

"Not everyone is gifted at spontaneous oratory, but those who aren't, who are in this business should work at it. She obviously doesn't prepare."

The Democratic Party is the oldest political party in the world, Will said.

"By almost any measure it is the most important political party in the world," he said. "It got this country through two wars and a depression. What it is doing in putting Mr. Biden out there now is the height of irresponsibility. He doesn't have the physical stamina and mental acuity and it is apparent to the voters."

Will thinks Biden is running because Trump is running.

"If it became clear that Trump is not going to be the Republican nominee, I think Biden would step down," he said. "That's a supposition."

Will cited the Access Hollywood tape reveal in 2016 as an "immensely important moment in American Political history."

"When the Access Hollywood tape came out I thought Mr. Trump would be through," Will said. "When it didn't, I realized we were living in a country that was a little bit different than we thought."

Will has called Trump an intellectual sociopath, and he would prefer almost any other Republican candidate as the party's presidential nominee.

When asked about the divided nature of America, Will said he thinks the media is part of the problem. Partly, the configuration of the media is a response to polarization, he said.

"MSNBC and FOX did not create their audiences," he said. "They were created because there was an unserved niche out there. And it turns out that when you serve that niche, you can enlarge the niche."

The intense minorities that are inflamed by partisan media have a disproportionally tone-setting effect on the country, Will said.

"Candidates who ought to know better are misled by this and might say, 'well, we have to keep Tucker Carlson happy,'" he said.

As for the Republican party's current status, Will said we're about to find out, and the result might have larger implications than on just the party.

"At this point, Trump has largely been bulletproof," Will said. "You'd have to say it is Trump's party now. For Republicans, that is risky because he has run for president twice and lost the popular vote twice. It is almost inconceivable that he would win the popular vote in 2024 for lots of reasons. Unless Biden collapses, which is perfectly possible.

"This is a dangerous moment for the country," he said.

The idea of partisan media can harken back to the founders, when all the newspapers were partisan. "So, partisan media is hardly radical," he said.

About diversity, equity and inclusion in academia, Will cited the California university system's requirement that administrators make "an affirmation of a certain ideology, and I am opposed to that. Why have an office that is there to enforce equity."

Will's evening address posed the case for free expression.

"How did we get to a place where young people go to college obsessed by their own fragility?" he said. "These are young people proud of the fact that they are fragile."

It's a new phenomenon, he said.

"Two-thirds of Americans don't go to college and those who do are in the top one percent of the most privileged people on the planet," Will said.

Bucknell's next speaker in the Freedom of Expression series will be Claremont McKenna College Professor of American Politics Jon A. Shields. Shields, author or co-author of three books on the American right, will speak Oct. 17 in Vaughan Literature Building's Trout Auditorium.