Month: September 2011
-
Why candidates win: Tactics vs. fundamentals
Today’s NYT news analysis by Jeff Zeleny offers a classic example of how journalists attribute political success to tactical strategies. In the course of an article reviewing President Obama’s political standing, Zeleny notes that Obama’s approval is lower than that of Clinton and Reagan at this point in their terms, which he attributes to their
-
Jim Cooper wrongly blames Gingrich for polarization
Joe Nocera’s New York Times column today features Rep. Jim Cooper, a moderate Tennessee Democrat, lamenting the state of Congress. Unfortunately, Cooper almost completely misunderstands cause and effect in his diagnosis of legislative polarization, which focuses, as Nocera writes, on “the internal dynamics of Congress itself”: I thought it would be useful to ask Cooper