Advocacy – post electoral bureaucratic politics
Presenting facts in the light most favorable to your position, and most harmful to the position of your adversary, is expected of trial lawyers in the zealous pursuit of their clients’ case, or prosecution thereof. The jury decides which facts presented by the advocates to accept as persuasive, and the judge moderates the procedure to keep the process fair. Since the trial forum is balanced and moderated, advocates can go to any lengths in their representations of reality that they think they can get away with.
Political advocacy, also largely conducted by lawyers, has no jury for vetting facts and no judge to moderate a fair process. Political advocates are presumed to be tempered by the ethics of statesmanship.
It only takes a few minutes observation of the C-Span coverage of Congress to refute that myth and see how the throttle on advocacy of adherence to the ethics of statesmanship gets abused and ignored.
Locally in Elbert County, hard Left writers routinely build cases using all the devices a lawyer might employ in trial advocacy. And after one of them presents such an analysis, an applauding cadre of supporters dependably, relentlessly, repeat and elevate the case ad nauseam to drown out any questions of fact.
The longer they can keep the attention of the media, the thicker their patina of legitimacy becomes, and the more insistent the accolades get. The media rarely fail to cooperate.
Periodically the voters get a chance to reset the players after an extended clock numbered in years has expired, but the vote really only checks the most egregious offenders. Meanwhile, in the middle of the clock where untold thousands of bureaucratic actions play out, the ebbs and flows of advocacy politics do the most damage.