The last hope for bringing some rationality to the 2016 Presidential field died Tuesday night when Jon Stewart announced that he would be leaving “The Daily Show.” He didn’t say when—he muttered the names of a few late-2015 months, and something about working out details—but it sounds like it will be before the earliest primary. This is the first good argument that I’ve heard for making the New Hampshire and Iowa contests even earlier. Someone needs to sort out who is clumsy and who is absurd, who is semi-serious and who is wholly alarming; the Republican base isn’t going to do that on its own. And one of those characters—as Stewart might put it, the guy from Jersey, the Dr. Seuss fetishist, the Aqua Buddha ophthalmologist, the little brother of the other guy—has to get the nomination. Stewart, in his Tuesday night announcement, said, “This show doesn’t deserve an even slightly restless host, and neither do you.” What about the poor G.O.P.? Doesn’t Jon Stewart want to help?
This is a bipartisan problem. Let’s say Hillary Clinton announces that she is running. It seems unavoidable now— just as unavoidable as the investigative pieces that will come, laying out questions about her finances and entanglements and those of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation. Many will be petty, and some, for Democrats, may be painful. Bill Clinton will also be out on the campaign trail. Picture that, even before you picture him back in the White House, but without a proper job. Even last time, with an abbreviated campaign, he said things that got his wife in trouble. He might also do things that have profound comedic and political implications (he has before). When all that happens, who, above the undifferentiated wail from Fox News, will calibrate the needle on the dis- scale? (That’s the one that ranges from dismissible to disappointing, to disquieting and disgusting, and on until disqualifying.)
And, speaking of Fox News, who will point out, as Stewart did in the program last night, that its commentators have suddenly begun criticizing President Obama for not behaving more like an autocratic Islamic king? And who will encourage Megyn Kelly when she uses her powers for good?
As for MSNBC, who will help the network to distinguish between what is actually outrageous on the right and what is politics as usual?
Jon Stewart may not, one day to the next, drive a candidate from the field; at times, his attention appears to slightly prolong a candidate’s presence. (Herman Cain.) And his disdain can sometimes be used as a rallying point. But he is very good at making it clear when we are looking at Citizens United-funded performance art, and when what’s on stage is something, even something quite funny, approximating real politics. He made Elizabeth Warren, whom he had on as a guest many times when she was still a Harvard professor, seem most serious not by being grim himself but by making clear to the audience that the reason he so enjoyed her company was that it was awfully fun listening to someone so smart. (Vox recounts how, when Warren’s first appearance wasn’t going well, Stewart got her back on track.)
Over the years, that’s how we’ve come to feel about him.
But not only him, one might say. This is where, for reassurance, one might rewatch clips of John Oliver doing his Carlos Danger shimmy routine. Maybe Comedy Central is talking to HBO, where Oliver is now. One of Stewart’s triumphs has been fostering talent like Oliver. And, of course, Colbert, who recently left Comedy Central, and Larry Wilmore, Jason Jones, Samantha Bee, and Jessica Williams. It won’t be hard for one of them to be funny, but Stewart exhibited a particular genius in bringing them together and deploying them over the political landscape, and conveying that he enjoyed their company. It created a pleasure in politics itself, which is otherwise endangered in this country.
Is it because Mitt isn’t running that Stewart had enough? Is it because a Bush and a Clinton are? (“The Daily Show” chyron for the 2012 Republican National Convention was “The Road to Jeb Bush 2016.”) Front-runner implosions are still possible, of the sort that would unleash the sort of ego-driven political free-for-all that Stewart seems uniquely capable of making sense of. He made it clear that he has some brittle feelings about the treatment of Brian Williams. Fine—but none of those things, one must concede, are of the sort that have flustered Stewart before. Maybe he really does need a break—couldn’t he squeeze one in the form of some long naps before the election starts, then come back?
“I don’t have any specific plans—got a lot of ideas, got a lot of things in my head,” Stewart said on Tuesday night. But that is what the Republican debates are all about! And they are starting soon.
