How does a Republican National Committee chairman fill the time between an epic presidential beatdown and next year's midterm elections?
Fund-raising? Reaching out to Latinos? Plowing through all 20 of Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturin naval adventure novels?
All are worthy pursuits. But there's another activity that's sure to burn the hours without offending your base: Pick a fight with the mainstream media.
RNC Chair Reince Priebus is spending the dog days nipping at the shins of NBC and CNN after they recently announced projects devoted to the life and career of Hillary Clinton. In letters to CNN Worldwide's President Jeff Zucker and NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt, Priebus called each program "a thinly veiled attempt at putting a thumb on the scales of the 2016 presidential election."
NBC Entertainment is planning a four-hour dramatic miniseries starring Diane Lane — a casting choice that makes me feel very old. Courtney Hunt will write and direct; her lone feature film to date is the gritty upstate drama "Frozen River," which starred Melissa Leo (who earned an Oscar nomination) as a desperate single mother smuggling immigrants across the U.S.-Canada border. The network says its narrative will begin in 1998, the Clintonian annus horribilis, and continue through the 2000 Senate run, the 2008 presidential primary defeat and the State Department years.
CNN Films has commissioned a documentary from Oscar-winning filmmaker Charles Ferguson, whose previous efforts include the Iraq war examination "No End in Sight" and "Inside Job," a scathing look at the causes of the 2008 fiscal meltdown that points fingers at Republicans and Democrats alike.
Priebus issued an ultimatum to both networks: Scrap your Clinton project before Wednesday's summer gathering of the RNC, or he'll call for a vote freezing the offending network out of participation in the 2016 primary debates.
His antipathy might be premature. For all Priebus knows, NBC's miniseries will depict Clinton hunting vampires in Westchester County, or plotting the death of Michael Jackson at the behest of a global conspiracy of Freemasons. On the flip side, Ferguson has shown his chops as an investigative journalist, and could conceivably turn up material that would delight GOP candidates (or aspirant Democrats) eager to see Clinton hobbled.
Based on the personnel involved, it seems unlikely that either film will be hackwork, whether political or artistic. But Priebus doesn't appear interested in waiting for the filmmakers to wrap up filming or even write a script.
Those familiar with youth sports might recognize his tactic as a classic example of "gaming the ref," in which a coach reacts to a close call that goes against her team as if it's the most egregious affront to justice since the Dreyfus Affair. The motive of ref-gaming isn't necessarily overturning that decision, but rather influencing the ref's future calls.
Priebus might see this as a win-win-win: He gets his face on every summer-desperate basic cable chatfest just before the RNC's big shindig; the networks are put on alert that the GOP bias police will be on the case throughout production; and last but not least, Priebus hands himself a justification for reducing the number of Republican primary debates.
Like most Americans, he knows that the two dozen Republican primary debates in the 2012 cycle were on balance awful for the party but great for the writers of "Saturday Night Live" — a "traveling circus," he admitted this week.
Hoping for a better outcome, Priebus ref-gamed MSNBC's liberalish Mika Brzezinski on Thursday, explaining the reason why she won't be moderating any of the 2016 primary debates: "Because you're not actually interested in the future of the Republican Party and our nominees," he said.
It's unclear what Priebus means by an "interest" in the party's future: As the co-host of a political talk show, she's probably more intrigued by that subject than she is by the latest NASCAR standings. If he means Brzezinski doesn't have a stake in the party's success, I'm not sure that she's supposed to.
Priebus understands the problem but not the solution. If Republicans want the 2016 primary debates to serve the best interests of the party (as well as the nation at large), they'll need to be moderated by people who aren't going to go easy on its candidates. That would be like sending young gladiators to secretarial school in hopes they'll be prepared for the Saturday night under card at the Coliseum.
The 2012 debates were more like reality TV, a genre that elevates colorful characters. That's why completely useless but highly amusing candidates like Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain were allowed to float through largely unchallenged, postponing a necessary culling of the herd until it was too late for poor Mitt Romney.
Fighting the public's interest in the Hillary Clinton story — a tale, light and dark, that we've been living through for the past two decades — isn't going to boost Republican chances in 2016.
Priebus should concentrate on making sure that his party's candidates are ready for prime time.
cseiler@timesunion.com • 518-454-5619