The only thing that mars this delightful New Republic piece on Beltway tabloidism is that it's labeled "Parody." Would we somehow have mistaken "What If POLITICO Had Covered the Civil War?" as a solemn sort of counterfactual, historical reset?
It's like labeling Anna Karenina "Fictional Biography," or Romeo and Juliet "Tragedy," or the Old Testament as "Musings by a bunch of uptight patriarchs not to be taken literally" (OK, so maybe some editorial labeling is in order).
At any rate, here's a taste of TNR's disturbingly funny channeling:
NEW BATTLEGROUND POLL: Lincoln’s negatives are "through the roof" in Va., N.C., S.C., Ga., Miss., Ala., Louisiana, Ark., Tenn. PLAY-BOOK TRUTH BOMB: Lincoln is not going to improve these numbers if he refuses to press the flesh. A playbooker telegraphs: "I don’t know what happened to the gregarious guy we saw in 1860. Jeff Davis hasn’t been invited to the White House for cocktails once since Abe became president!"
I also particularly enjoyed this one:
NOT-S0-GREAT EMANCIPATOR: "Lincoln Proclamation Stirs Controversy," by Jethraux VandeHei: "Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation was bound to rile opponents who already viewed the president as high-handed and arbitrary…. Congressional Democrats have vowed to hold hearings, which could put border-state Republicans in an awkward position…."
I confess my voyeuristic pleasures. I still read POLITICO, as do all political observers who regularly bemoan its "insider" superficiality. Otherwise we'd have only vaporous suspicions to ridicule.
But let's face it: POLITICO is so often shallow because today's politics isn't exactly a deep racket. It was once the creative art of compromise surrounding the social sciences of complex policy; now it's almost exclusively a dull, brutish, uninspiring battering ram.
We all know who made it that way--and it's that phenomenon we tediously cover, with the thuggish knuckledraggers as stars. They've made politics personal; it's no longer business. But it is POLITICO's, whose personalities-driven tabloidism can at times be useful in sorting out the insipid chaos that is modern politics, even if the publication's really crappy "lack of leadership" stories accompany it.