Mark Halperin gets to occupy real estate on the op-ed pages of the New York Times, while confessing to a level of stupidity that can only be described as mind-boggling:<\/p>\n
MORE than any other book, Richard Ben Cramer\u2019s \u201cWhat It Takes,\u201d about the 1988 battle for the White House, influenced the way I cover campaigns.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not alone. The book\u2019s thesis \u2014 that prospective presidents are best evaluated by their ability to survive the grueling quadrennial coast-to-coast test of endurance required to win the office \u2014 has shaped the universe of political coverage.<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
For most of my time covering presidential elections, I shared the view that there was a direct correlation between the skills needed to be a great candidate and a great president. The chaotic and demanding requirements of running for president, I felt, were a perfect test for the toughest job in the world.<\/p>\n
But now I think I was wrong. The \u201ccampaigner equals leader\u201d formula that inspired me and so many others in the news media is flawed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Who woulda thunk it? What a shock to find that the ability to fool most of the people most of the time does not correlate with presidential competence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mark Halperin gets to occupy real estate on the op-ed pages of the New York Times, while confessing to a level of stupidity that can only be described as mind-boggling: MORE than any other book, Richard Ben Cramer\u2019s \u201cWhat It Takes,\u201d about the 1988 battle for the White House, influenced the way I cover campaigns. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctblueblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}