I rather like Politico's congressional and lobbying coverage, and Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin and Playbook are invaluable, but sometimes the paper's sensationalism really dips into the shameful. As of now, they've just unveiled a new feature where, every day, they will rank whether Obama or McCain "won" the day. So yesterday, for instance, McCain "won" the day because "The USA Today/Gallup poll giving [McCain/Palin] a 4-point lead among registered voters framed the day’s top question: Does McCain now hold the advantage?" Read that again. McCain "won" yesterday's day of campaigning because a poll conducted last week showed him in the lead and that led reporters at places like Politico to write about his advantage which in turn led The Politico to render the objective judgment that McCain won the day because they framed their coverage in a way that was favorable to him. During that same day, Sarah Palin showed she didn't know how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac worked, which could have generated a lot of coverage and given Obama the day, but that's not what The Politico decided to emphasize. I want to be clear: This would be as stupid and trivializing and crassly sensationalistic if Obama took every day between now and the election. It boils campaigns down to questions of media coverage and consensus -- not even conventional -- wisdom. It's totally untethered from issues or actual events or substantive realities or normative judgments. It spurs the campaigns to compete ever harder for the daily news cycle. It's almost a parody of horserace journalism: Will Mark Halperin compete by naming the winner of each hour, or maybe show restraint and merely crown a champion of the morning, afternoon, and night? Meanwhile, the front page article on The Politico right now is "McCain, Palin push biography, not issues: Considering the country's challenges, the focus on personal narratives might strike some as superficial for the times." Indeed.
