The Gamble by John Sides & Lynn Vavreck Game Change 2012 by John Heilemann & Mark Halperin … Modern campaign journalism was born the day Theodore White published “The Making of the President 1960.” White was the first to frame a campaign as a novel, portraying the candidates as protagonists, […] Read more »
HealthCare.gov doesn’t help Obama’s argument for greater government
… Administration officials insist that the health-care law is sound, even if the Web site has proved a nightmare to navigate. But the questions raised by the botched rollout go beyond whether the Web site Obama touted so positively is merely plagued with technological glitches or is flawed in more […] Read more »
The Reselling of the President
Richard Wolffe’s account of the 2012 election [“The Message: The Reselling of President Obama”] is a fine behind-the-scenes campaign-trail book that makes me wonder about the future of behind-the-scenes campaign-trail books. … Yet “The Message” is actually most interesting when Wolffe descends from the executive suite to the “boiler room,” […] Read more »
The Romney campaign’s own polls showed it would lose
Immediately after the November election, all of the reporting suggested that the Romney camp was in total shock. “Shell-shocked,” said one news report. It quoted a Romney senior adviser saying, “I don’t think there was one person who saw this coming.” Well, that wasn’t true — even within the Romney […] Read more »
When elections used to have consequences
… In this modern era of politics — which includes the incredibly close 2000 presidential race and another close contest in 2004 — the 2012 election produced a clear-cut outcome. And as the saying goes, elections have consequences. It’s how Democratic victories in the 1930s paved the way for Franklin […] Read more »
The Santorum Surge
… On February 7, Santorum won the Colorado and Minnesota caucuses as well as the nonbinding Missouri primary. Santorum beat Romney by almost 6 points in Colorado and by almost 30 points in both Minnesota and Missouri. … With so little pre-election polling and no exit polls in these three […] Read more »