How Karoline Leavitt Debased Her Job

The lie is the elemental matter of the Trump administration.

The value of lying is Donald Trump’s deepest belief.

He built his celebrity image through shameless and constant deceit that permitted him to bounce from blunder to blunder while constantly reeling in new suckers.

Lying is also what binds his loyalists to him: The highest calling of any figure in Trump world is to refuse any concessions to reality when Trump commands it, and the surest ticket to oblivion is to speak the truth.

All of this has made the job of press secretary in a Trump administration less, not more, important than it normally is.

In most administrations, the White House press secretary has a unique role in shaping public opinion, whereas the other staffers are concerned principally with governing.

In Trump’s White House, distorting reality, rather than trying to improve it, is the highest priority for every official, including and especially the president himself.

In an administration where everybody’s main priority is to lie on television, the role of the press secretary is redundant.

Karoline Leavitt, who departed as press secretary this week, did the job perfectly well.

But the job, as defined by this administration, is not terribly demanding.

Traditional press secretaries long engaged in “spin,” a now-antiquated term to describe the delicate art of arranging facts in the most flattering light.

Spin requires real skill.

Its practitioners must grasp the underlying reality, which points must be danced around and which emphasized, and how to walk a reporter from their skeptical premise to the administration’s desired conclusion.

Leavitt never engaged in spin, and she probably wouldn’t know how.