Scott Rosenberg has some good comments on Gore v. the Media.
The Saletan piece is the kind of classic inside-the-Beltway analysis that, too often, we get, not only from Slate but from the Washington Post and the rest of the political media. Saletan, a smart and insightful writer, seems to have no interest (as Josh Marshall points out today) in even exploring whether Gore was right or not. Right or wrong is irrelevant. Gore is chastised for even caring about whether he was right or wrong. All that matters is tactics. Did Gore find the precise point on the rhetoric dial to press the electorate's buttons or not? Well, he didn't win the election, so obviously he didn't. (Though, actually, he did win a majority of the votes, but Saletan, like the rest of the Beltway world, won't even think of going there --rehashing the contested 2000 election is so tiresome and unpatriotic in these days of the War on Something or Other.)
Although, the press endless rehashes the election, but only through their obsessive-compulsive fixation on Gore's every movement.
