"Why the Press can't report the campaign"

A very, very good post from Ezra Klein.

There's one thing I want to add to this: First, none of this, per se, is the media's fault. As Joan Didion wrote in "Insider Baseball" two decades ago, the fundamental audience for any campaign event is now television cameras. Reporters didn't ask for this to happen, but political strategists realized it was the best way to operate, so they started doing it.

So how do we fix this problem? I don't know. I think one way would be for news organizations to simply not cover the campaign as much, but that's unlikely to happen due to competitive pressures.

Understatements

Bob Woodward's title on this WaPo preview of his new book is merely "Staff Writer." Shouldn't it be something like "Fucking legend, God of all journalism, Conquer of Nixon, and Chronicle and Oracle of Truth"?

Nate Jackson for SecDef!

From an ESPN.com article on sports and the elections (via Dan Drezner):

Broncos tight end Nate Jackson wanted to attend as well, but he was in Arizona -- McCain territory -- preparing for the next day's preseason game against the Cardinals. Jackson, fresh off the field from a recent morning practice at Broncos training camp, said he's been an Obama supporter ever since he met the candidate at a fundraiser last year. Foreign policy concerns this football player.

"We shouldn't be shunning the rest of the world community. It's important not to isolate yourself from the world," said Jackson, who gave $500 to Obama's campaign in March. Then, standing outside the locker room while catching his breath, he closely quoted former President John F. Kennedy's edict, "Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate."

Jackson said he believes Obama would espouse that ideal by working to build consensus with other countries.

And this is a true Axis of Evil:

Former Republican candidate Rudy Giuliani also had a strong sports appeal before he dropped out of the race in January... including... $17,000 from his hometown New York Yankees.

Former terrorists in love

Qaddafi loves Condi Rice:

After all, the Libyan leader had professed his “love” for the American secretary of state. “I support my darling black African woman,” Colonel Qaddafi told the network Al Jazeera last year. “I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders.”

He continued: “Yes, Leezza, Leezza, Leezza... I love her very much.”

That's kind of creepy. But I think we should replace "Condi" with "Leezza."

Obama: Protectionist or Free-Trader?

I disagree with the following summary by Dan Drezner:

My favorite part of the speech was McCain’s take on coping with the global economy. It contained his only concrete proposal (reforming unemployment insurance) while also emphasizing their different takes on the global economy (Obama: protect old industries; McCain: prepare citizens for new industries). If my vote was based only on foreign economic policy, I’d be voting for McCain and it wouldn’t be a close call.

A lot of people on the right (like Drezner) seem to think Obama is a protectionist. A lot of people on the left think he's a free-trader. Likely, he's somewhere in between - he will try to "protect old industries," but not through subsidies, but through somewhat slightly stronger labor and environmental protections in free trade agreements. Also, I feel like Obama emphasizes creating new jobs in new industries as much as McCain does.

A Suprising Truth

This one:

Of Sarah Palin I know nothing except her lack of grace. She lashed into Barack Obama after a week in which he was the only public figure to defend her against the press, or at least to excoriate those who had focused on her daughter. She might have started with a thank you.

Eastern Elite

Mitt Romney just lashed out against "Eastern Elites" - you know, the kind of people who spend part of their time in college in France, receive both law degrees and MBAs from Harvard, then become billionaires by running consultancy and investment firms, and then use the money they made to enter politics.

You know, Eastern Elites.

Are scoops still important?

Many of the things Sarah Palin has done are probably no worse than some of the things Mitt Romney/Joe Lieberman/Joe Biden/any other VP candidate have done, but the reason the press is focusing on them is because the press had never heard of any of them. That's Jack Shafer's diagnosis, and I think it's 100% correct.

But this leads me to a second point - how important are scoops anyway? If the Washington Post scoops the Baltimore Sun on a story about Maryland governor Martin O'Malley, do Sun subscribers leave en masse and sign up for the Post? I don't think so. That's an odd example, because the papers aren't direct competitors, but there are very few direct competitors left in the newspaper industry.

For example, The Boston Globe isn't really competing with the Boston Herald. They're going after two different sets of geographical, political, cultural, etc. demographics. Generally, both papers are competing against everything else people could do with their time: play Scrabulous, watch a movie, etc.

But I don't think many journalists or newspaper execs realize this yet. People like to know about the news, but very few have to read the newspaper. Or, to put it another way, it's not the Huffington Post that's killing newspapers, but the internet in general. The 30 minutes someone once spent reading the paper isn't automatically going to reading online news (although it oftentimes probably is), it could be going to watching an episode of Arrested Development on Hulu.

"Architectural Determinism"

George Will, after describing the cushy home FDR grew up in:

People who believe in architectural determinism should believe that FDR's housing must have prevented him from empathizing with common folks.

I believe that phrase is a keeper.

Andrew Sullivan

For all his professed devotion to the issues, he seems to be awfully obsessed with certain scandals. He posted way too much about both the Palin pregnancy/nonpregnancy/daughter's pregnancy and the cross in the sand story McCain told during the Rick Warren forum. I think this is partially a function of the fact that Andrew posts all the freaking time, but it still seems weird coming from him.