{"id":13763,"date":"2007-11-30T11:00:59","date_gmt":"2007-11-30T16:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13763.html"},"modified":"2007-11-30T11:00:59","modified_gmt":"2007-11-30T16:00:59","slug":"did-mark-halperin-follow-through-on-his-mea-culpa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/did-mark-halperin-follow-through-on-his-mea-culpa\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Mark Halperin follow through on his mea culpa?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Less than a week ago, Time magazine’s Mark Halperin raised a quite a few eyebrows in the world of political journalism with a startling NYT op-ed<\/a>. Halperin, best known for his work at ABC News (“The Note” was his creation) before becoming a senior political analyst for Time, argued that there are fundamental problems with the way reporters cover a presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

Putting aside the messenger, the broader message was largely right:<\/p>\n

Our political and media culture reflects and drives an obsession with who is going to<\/i> win, rather than who should<\/i> win.<\/p>\n

For most of my time covering presidential elections, I shared the view that there was a direct correlation between the skills needed to be a great candidate and a great president. The chaotic and demanding requirements of running for president, I felt, were a perfect test for the toughest job in the world.<\/p>\n

But now I think I was wrong. The “campaigner equals leader” formula that inspired me and so many others in the news media is flawed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Aside from a few errors of fact and judgment<\/a>, Halperin’s criticism of the horse-race nature of the process was welcome. I don’t know what took him so long to reach the conclusion that most of us recognized years ago, but why be petty? As Yglesias concluded<\/a>, “[I]f Halperin wants to come over to the side of light, I think we should take him.”<\/p>\n

The trick, of course, would be the follow-through. Halperin argued that the media should help make the process more meaningful and substantive, but as Kevin Drum noted<\/a>, “I think I’ll wait to see if he actually changes the way he covers this year’s campaign.”<\/p>\n

Good idea. As it turns out, Halperin has written two pieces for publication this week, so we can already evaluate whether he’s taking his own advice. (I’ll give you a hint: he’s not.)
\n
\nToday, for example, Time readers can read a 600-word piece<\/a> on why Oprah Winfrey may not help Barack Obama’s campaign strategy in early primary and caucus states.<\/p>\n

To win the Democratic nomination for President, Barack Obama still needs the same thing he has needed all along — for voters to see him as ready to be commander in chief by January 2009. So now the question is: Will appearing at weekend campaign rallies with Oprah Winfrey help him achieve that goal?<\/p>\n

Mark me down as more than a bit skeptical.<\/p>\n

Winfrey’s endorsement — and her announcement that she will appear with Obama at campaign events in Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire on December 8 and 9 — helps bring the following four things to Obama: campaign cash, celebrity, excitement and big crowds. The four things that Obama has on his own in great abundance — without Winfrey’s help — are campaign cash, celebrity, excitement and big crowds.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Halperin spends the rest of the piece noting how the conventional wisdom perceives Obama’s experience, and what the senator can do to help influence those perceptions and bolster his standing in the polls.<\/p>\n

So, on Sunday, Halperin told the nation<\/a>, “In the face of polls and horse-race maneuvering, we can try to keep from getting sucked in by it all.” Four days later, he wrote a piece for publication about polls and horse-race maneuvering. I guess it didn’t take him long to get “sucked in.”<\/p>\n

The other piece Halperin published this week came on Tuesday, when the political analyst told viewers what to watch for in this week’s CNN\/YouTube debate. The entire 700-word piece<\/a> was meta-analysis about Republicans’ strategy and positioning.<\/p>\n

So watch to see what CNN chooses, and how the candidates handle a format that is certainly not their first choice. But most of all, watch for the engagement between a group of candidates who are a lot more focused on each other and the voting in Iowa and New Hampshire, just over a month away, than they are on talking snowmen and debate formats.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There wasn’t a single word of substance in the entire piece. No depth, just horse-race.<\/p>\n

I’d hoped that Halperin would at least wait a week<\/i> before giving up on his entire thesis and going back to the same, tired analysis that he denounced in his NYT op-ed, but apparently, the temptation to get “sucked in” was just too great.<\/p>\n

Lucky for Halperin, there’s no such thing as media accountability, so his sudden, jarring reversal will have absolutely no consequences at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Less than a week ago, Time magazine’s Mark Halperin raised a quite a few eyebrows in the world of political journalism with a startling NYT op-ed. Halperin, best known for his work at ABC News (“The Note” was his creation) before becoming a senior political analyst for Time, argued that there are fundamental problems with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}