Obsessive, Unhinged Punditry
February 6, 2008 -- 8:02 PM EST // //
Paul Krugman, commenting on this post below pointing to WaPo writer Eugene Robinson's faulty prediction that Super Tuesday would prove a "repudiation" of Bill Clinton, sums up exactly what's wrong with this sort of stuff:
Attempts by pundits to make Super Tuesday into a referendum on Bill Clinton failed. People seem to have voted based on what they thought of the candidates. How novel!The key word there is "attempts." I was arguing with a friend about this whole Bill question, and he pointed out that there are legit questions to be asked about Bill's role in a Hillary presidency. Totally agreed. The issue here is one of degree -- the trouble with much of this punditry about Bill is the obsessive and unhinged quality it takes on at times.
For instance, WaPo's Richard Cohen endorsed Obama yesterday, and rather than say a single syllable about why he thinks Obama would make a good president, he submits ... Bill Clinton as one of his primary reasons driving this all-important choice. Meanwhile, Robinson predicted that the votes cast by millions of people across the country with all sorts of divergent interests and motives would be all about repudiating ... someone who isn't in the race.
As Krugman says, what we're really seeing here is attempts by opinion-makers to make the race all about Bill. There's nothing wrong with asking questions -- or even worrying -- about what role Bill would play in a Hillary administration. The problem here is this desire for the race to be all about him, even though the voters keep rejecting this view of things. It's a warped view of the race and it warps the dialog in a big way. And there's no sign that it's going to stop anytime soon.
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