I just finished Joe Klein’s new book, Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized by People Who Think You’re Stupid. It basically criticizes consultants as cautious and destructive, while candidates are weak and lack leadership qualities. There’s much to like in this book. I will, from time to time, just quote from it.
Television demanded transparency and the rules of presidential politics were changed. The voters took control, selecting the candidates in a maddening chaos of state-by-state campaigns. By 1976, the process had been turned upside down: a politician most Americans never heard of –Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia–won the nomination to the bemusement of Democrats (and Ronald Reagan nearly unseated the sitting Republican president, Gerald Ford). Presidential politics was now a matter of self-promotion rather than smoke-filled selection by political experts. Over time, journalists found convenient, and often foolish, ways to quantify the anarchy: money raised, standing in the polls, endorsements. These, rather than a sober assessment of character and leadership ability, became the yardsticks for presidential plausibility.
Indeed they are.