Via Blaze TV youtube, you can watch the brief exchange of Missouri Senator Josh Hawley (R), a likely 2028 candidate, pinning Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg with studies linking Facebook and Instagram to mental health problems.
I’m not going to address all the substance which is much more important, but only the style, which sadly, is probably even more important, because we know the greatest showmen and women are the ones who usually win.
Hawley scores points by bringing up Meta’s own studies, but then squanders them by failing to let Zuckerberg answer. It’s as simple as that. He has Zuck on the ropes, but instead of forcing Zuckerberg to answer, he just talks over him and moves onto a new topic.
It’s a common failing for politicians looking to score big points in congressional hearings. They ask the tough questions, but seem so intent on getting the face time for themselves that they fail to let the damage from their accusations really take hold.
And so instead of a search for answers, the politicians run the risk of appearing to political grand stand for points. They often score, but why didn’t Hawley let Zuckerberg address the fairly damning studies?
I bring up the point, not as a matter of substantive policy, but political savvy. Hawley has plenty of talent, but he’s executed poorly in the past, and we’ll see if he can resist overplaying his hand, in the future.
You always sense, with Hawley, that he might be a few exclamation marks away from going full Vivek populism. I don’t sense that’s where he wants to go, intellectually. But emotionally, he seems to want it so badly that he’s always going to be at risk of Vivek-ing himself.
If he’s going to succeed at this thing, he has to forge a better synergy between his Yale/Stanford-educated intellect and ambition.
