Lazy & Shallow

Digby has written a great post on a scary subject which Matt Yglesias raised -- that it is "the Washington political press" that actually determines the presidential candidates:

Yglesias:

This elite, lacking an actual stake in the outcome, can afford to let self-interest essentially dictate a policy of laziness. Hence, we may be doomed to an endless cycle of Senators (who DC political reporters already cover), governors from Virginia and Maryland (whose exploits are detailed in the Metro section of The Washington Post), and scions of famous families.

Digby:

This is one of the best explanations for what has seemed to be the very shallow bench of viable potential presidential candidates. The press corps is picking them. Oy vey.

And, as if channeling Bob Somerby, Digby concludes, after reading this shameless crap in the National Journal, that there is no design on the part of these pundits other than having some self-indulgent fun.

What can I say? This is what we are dealing with and there's no getting around it. These are not serious people, they are immature fools. And apparently, they are proud of it.

We have had a president for the last six years who is so stupid he can barely eat and breathe and who has single handedly destroyed more than 50 years of American leadership in the world. The American people have spoken loudly and clearly and have elected a new congress to provide some checks and balances to his reign of incompetence and executive power-mongering. They did not elect Democrats to provide the puerile putzes of the DC press corps with entertainment.

If these blindered fools can't see how many real stories are now potentially theirs for the taking, they should get out of the business. This could be the most fertile time for investigative reporting since Watergate --- Republicans are talking out of school for the first time in six long years. And the Democrats have the investigative tools to get to information that's been hidden. It should be great moment for DC journalism if DC journalism actually existed. Instead we are already back in the truthiness and fake news business, which they do very badly (particularly since we now have professional comedians who do truthiness and fake news far more entertainingly than these witless bores could ever hope to.)

The shallow cliches in that article are not just lighthearted good times. They illustrate the narrative that cost Al Gore an election and motivated an eight year media withchunt against President Clinton. But it's no joke, which events of the last six years should have pounded home to every person who works in the journalism business. This sophomoric approach to covering politics was largely responsible for the empowerment of the most destructive political leadership in American history.

And apparently they haven't learned a damned thing.

Update: Rick Perlstein wrote about the Pundit Primary sometime back.

It has long been a truism that Democrats pay way too much attention to elite opinion. Gore was criticized heavily for it. I think I always assumed, however, that the pundits and the press corps had a specific agenda for their choices. It never occurred to me before that it was sheer laziness and shallowness that led them to their choices.