REACTIONS WITHOUT ACTIONS. The media has this weird causality paradox, where they'll do things, and then pretend those things and their effects just magically occurred, and merrily report on the aftermath. That's how you get silly spectacles like the chattering class not reporting on a candidate's public pronouncements and then turning around and downgrading that candidate because the chattering class didn't report on his statements. The problem is the media, which is a major and powerful actor in our democracy, hews to an evidently absurd ethos which states that they cannot in any way influence political outcomes. Of course, there's absolutely no way they can avoid influencing elections, if only due to what they choose to cover. But if they state that publicly, the whole facade crashes down. But they can't ignore the outcomes of their actions, as they basically do decide elections. So you get absurd situations like this one, where they try to ease the tension by erasing the causal force behind news coverage, and simply reporting on campaign reportage as if it sprang fully-formed from the head of Zeus. --Ezra Klein
