Political journalism cannot be blamed for political outcome.

Matt Bai: Well I’m not sure it’s ever been any different – or at least not in modern history. I mean Theodore White started writing “The Making of the President” series in 1960. And Theodore White’s book were all …. There was no substance in them at all. And . . . and you know generations have improved upon that model. And it’s been a long time since we’ve spent a long time in substance. And look, let’s not . . . And I think it’s fair not to blame the media for this entirely. I mean the business of politics has become what we call the permanent campaign, right? I mean it’s . . . There’s a lot less governing going on. There’s a lot less . . . This is happening for a lot of reasons. The TV age has a lot to do with it – the proliferation of different kinds of media. But also the moment we’re living in. Look it’s hard to find answers to some of these problems. It’s hard to tell difficult truths. It’s much easier to resort to gamesmanship. It’s much easier to fix your language than it is to fix Bridgeport. You know it’s much easier not to think about the transition going on when the answers you have might be unpopular or wrong, or might do more harm than good. And so you know we have a lack of visionary leadership. And into that void comes a tremendous amount of tactical sort of gamesmanship, atmospheric, you know developments that have very little to do with the substance of governing. And the media does what the media does, which is covers what it sees. So I think there’s plenty of blame to go around. And I think it does change . . . You know I don’t wanna take the responsibility off the media, because there’s certainly a lot of us who are doing, I think, very substantive journalism. And that really amounts to asking . . . constantly asking a set of questions that people don’t really wanna answer, which is what I do much of my time and in much of writing. I always say it’s not our job to have answers. It’s our job to ask the right questions. And we ask them again, and again, and again. But I think we’re also . . . You know we’re also waiting for real leadership. I think we’re waiting for someone in the political process to step up and show us the way so we can have a more . . . more relevant, more profitable debate, and a more productive debate about where the country is going than the one we’ve been having for the last, you know, 25, 30 years. And you know I frankly think that takes a generational change.

Recorded on: 12/13/07