Ask a member of the political Press corps why they engage in on-the-bus groupthink and drive public expectations for the various candidates and ignore the candidates they don't like, and you will get the reply "Moi? You attribute that much power to little old me?"
Yeah. I do. And so does Glenn Greewald.
For all his obvious political abilities, Obama seems to have almost no clue regarding the real problems that the incoming President is going to have to face. He is running on his good looks and sunny disposition, with little real substance presented. He is the weakest of the three major Democratic candidates, yet the Press has anointed him "The Winner" and wants to ride his coattails to the White House. To do this they are smearing Hillary and ignoring Edwards.
They are doing much the same thing to the Republican candidates, although they tried hard to anoint Giuliani until he was found to simply not be up to prime time. McCain is now the Press flavor-of-the-week.
I'm not sure if the problem is that the political Press is afraid to dig into the real problems of America and so focus strictly on a press narrative driven by personality and who they like personally, or if they feel that they are part of the establishment and have to defend it. Whatever it is, the Press is making damned sure that American voters are as uninformed about the political capabilities of the various candidates as possible.
By obscuring the real issues, the Press becomes an extremely powerful influence in who gets elected as President and how America will operate in the next four to eight years. Let's never forget that the Press, through it's obvious detest of Gore, gave us an election in 2000 that was close enough to be stolen by the "Nice Guy" (and utter incompetent) George.
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