On ABC's "This Week," network-correspondent Jonathan Karl just took the Beltway's on-ramp to infinite job security by issuing the undefiant prediction that the 2012 presidential race will be close. Karl may not believe one syllable of it (he does, after all, seem like a bright lad), but for a Washington journalist to blast at the consecrated walls of safe, conventional wisdom is to rudely discombobulate the media's Frankensteinian creation of fairness -- meaning coverage straight down the middle, no matter the evidentiary imbalances; and commentary so bland as to be tasteless: both meanings.
Just what, at the moment, is the evidence for a close contest, which any tuned-in journalist would cite?
Let's see. We have a sitting president whose personal approval rating ranks somewhere in the neighborhood of Bing Crosby's; whose record of foreign policy achievements is so manifestly stellar it has the opposition fancifully wallowing in the dirt; whose domestic record of uninterrupted private-sector job growth and declining unemployment is positively awe inspiring when one stops to consider the ruthless, monolithic obstacles erected in his path by the sociopathic GOP; and whose head-to-head matchup numbers against a cold-blooded outsourcer or a disgraced wannabe despot or an early-Alzheimers governor or a utopian Bob Taft rather consistently indicate anything from a thundering blowout to at least a reasonably solid win.
And, this sitting president has yet to really begin campaigning.
So of course network correspondents are wont to join the nail-biting Beltway choir of always conventionally wise agnosticism and predict a real humdinger of a cliffhanger.