Here's a wacky idea: how about a reporter for a major newspaper writes a piece looking at where candidates from a party stand on a certain issue--illegal immigration perhaps. Wouldn't that be nice? In fact, that's exactly what McClatchy has as the lead article on its Washington bureau website (which you should be reading). The Washington Post's politics site, meanwhile, currently leads with "No Candidate Dominates GOP Race." Also, I hear Hillary Clinton is doing well on the Democratic side. Don't tell anyone though, I'm keeping it secret 'till I can pitch the article to the one guy in American who hasn't heard about it. Seriously, wouldn't the Post's readers prefer actual facts, rather than rehashed horse-race droppings? They do get one piece picking over Mitt Romney's statements on immigration, but it's primarily concerned with catching him in a lie rather than actually, you know, informing us about his views. The New York Times, meanwhile, has no articles on issues on it's politics page at all right now (except a online-only issues finder thingy). Campaign coverage and polls have a place, as do profiles, but things have gone completely out of whack if that's all that gets covered. This won't be a new complaint to readers of this blog, but I though it was worth pointing out an example of what things could be like. It's not even that great of an article and the fact that I was so happy to see it strikes me as somewhat sad, but so is the state of our current political reporting. --Sam Boyd
