QUOTE OF THE DAY….From Joe Klein, begging his fellow reporters not to make the same mistake he made 16 years ago:
In 1993, I did a pretty shabby job of covering Bill Clinton’s economic plan. It was, in sum, a very good plan — it worked wonders for the economy — but I focused on the mishaps. (Clinton, for example, pulled the rug out from under House Democrats by offering a carbon tax, which they voted for…and then the President removed it from the bill.) Clinton couldn’t get any Republican votes for the package. A disaster! He had trouble getting Democratic votes for it; he had to beg Bob Kerrey for his vote to get it through the Senate. His presidency was in ruins! He had lost all credibility! (Actually, those of us who had focused on some big ugly trees rather than the blooming forest were the ones who had lost credibility.) It pains me to watch normally reasonable colleagues overreacting to Obama’s situation now — which is far less dire than Clinton’s was.
The problem is that Republicans know what attracts media attention: shiny new baubles. So we need an even shinier new bauble of our own to distract them. But what? A war? Maybe a shark attack somewhere? Or some Britney news?
