After years of jumping when Drudge says jump, Mark Halperin must be exceptionally well sourced, which is why I assume things like this comment on McCain's housing problem won't hurt his career.
HALPERIN: My hunch is this is going to end up being one of the worst moments in the entire campaign for one of the candidates but it's Barack Obama. … I believe that this opened the door to not just Tony Rezko in that ad, but to bring up Reverend Wright, to bring up his relationship with Bill Ayers.
Halperin's language, including the use of "opening the door" to Tony Rezko, etc., is strikingly similar to what Marc Ambinder quoted a "campaign official" as saying the day McCain made the gaffe.
A campaign official said that the decision to Go Rezko was Obama's. "He's opened the door to this," the official said. ...
Earlier in the news cycle, McCain's press team invoked Obama's friendship with a former member of the Weatherman, William Ayres, and an official said that even Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, "is now fair game."
Notice the difference between how Ambinder relayed this information and how Halperin did. Ambinder attributed it to a source, while Halperin repeated what the source said verbatim but as his own expert "analysis." This is a conscious act of deception that facilitates the presentation of RNC talking points as Halperin's ostensibly "independent" view as a reporter.
I also think it's fairly obvious that the Republicans were planning on using Ayers, Rezko, and Wright anyway, and are trying to present the Obama campaign's push on McCain's housing as somehow "unfair" so that when they do use them, they will be "justified." At the very least, you would expect someone who has worked as a reporter this long not to take it at face value when a campaign operative tells you that they weren't intending to use the most explosive oppo material they had on their opponent, but the other guy "went too far."
At any rate, the McCain campaign has campaign officials to repeat its talking points. If Mark Halperin wants to be one of those, he should quit his job and join them. But he shouldn't be abusing his authority and credibility as a reporter by repeating what he hears from the McCain campaign as his own "analysis."
-- A. Serwer
