In Defense of the Mainstream Media

You've spent three or four days talking about our "Iowa lesson," Jennifer, but the two newspapers I read daily–the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal–were not off base in their coverage of the general trends in Iowa, so far as I can tell. And on the ground this week in my home state, I don't see how that's changed. Sure, in the Times there was the standard passive aggressiveness towards viable Republican candidates, and some excessive fawning for a guy like Huckabee who is willing to throw conservatism under the bus. I know, I know. The national media hasn’t gotten around to that front-page Mitt Romney is Devil Spawn—Vote Rudy! No publication is perfect. But the idea that the national media “doesn’t know squat” is a bit silly.

And as far as anyone here forgetting “at our peril” that people vote for candidates based on emotion rather than “policy positions or resume points,” I’d argue it’s more perilous for a magazines concerned with philosophy and policy to behave as if it is acceptable to choose candidates based on who you’d feel comfortable talking to through a mouth full of potato salad at a backwoods barbeque rather than ideas. To simply anticipate voters can be sold on candidates with a broken philosophy en masse based on emotion is not a earth shattering insight, nor would it come a surprise to Eric Hoffer or any regular observer of modern politics since.

We have plenty of outlets already on the usual electoral stupidity beat. A few attempting to transcend it won't kill anybody.