Election Coverage

I've just watched "Face The Nation" on CBS; it was notable for several things but in particular the fact that in 46 minutes of interviews and panel discussion there was no serious discussion of issues and policies. None.

After the ritual providing of an uncritical public platform to the two guests (Donald Trump and Ben Carson), CBS News Elections Director Anthony Salvanto talked exclusively about the electoral process and campaign dynamics. That's about as inside baseball as you could want and frankly of no particular interest to anyone other than die-hard political junkies.

Next came the consummate political operative, David Axelrod, diagnosing Hilary's campaign problems. Talking about Obama's 2008 campaign, he recalled what happens when campaigns falter: "what happens is every donor in America becomes an amateur political consultant and very generous with their advice. I remember a donor summoning Obama and telling he had to fire his team". That tells you all you need to know about who is pulling the strings, and that advice is almost certainly not limited to operational campaigning issues.

Also of interest was Axelrod's reaction to Joe Biden's interview with Stephen Colbert: "I don't think he's playing a game when he says he doesn't know what he has the emotional reserves to run a presidential race". Axelrod's initial assumption is that this was a calculated political stratagem; which gives you an insight into political campaign management.

Peter Baker noted "the Clintons have been through this so many times, scandal, recovery, scandal, recovery, setback of some sort, and they're good at it. They're the leading re-bounders in American politics of the last two decades". Paraphrasing Oscar Wilde, "to be embroiled in one scandal is misfortune; to be embroiled in several looks like carelessness".

The one clip from Stephen Colbert's interview with Joe Biden the media are playing again and again is the one in which he talks about having the emotional energy to run for president. The far more moving moments for me was when he  talked about his son. A measure of his humility is that he really did think the son had outgrown the father, and as someone whose father though he was a perpetual disappointment, for me that was particularly poignant.