These Are Not The Questions Or Answers They Want

[phantom power]

The elite political press in this country forfeited the right to this kind of pretension years ago, and its various—and, arguably, ongoing—attempts to scandalize almost everything done by either Clinton went a long way towards draining the credibility from Cillizza's argument. The institutions on behalf of which Cillizza seems to be arguing were the ones who inflated Whitewater, and the travel office, and the cattle futures, and the billing records, and they are the ones who have outsourced the ratfking to a known campaign operative this time around. They are the institutions that tailor their news to existing sub rosa narratives that passed their sell-by dates at the turn of the last century. "The role of the media in this process is to show voters who these people are, really..." My god, Al Gore may never stop laughing.

...

How democracy is better served by a couple hundred more questions about Benghazi than it is by Rodham Clinton's talking to these people about drug abuse and mental-health issues is a question best left to finer minds than this.

I sympathize with the folks in the pack. I truly do. Covering any presidential campaign day-to-day is a soul-grinding slog through an awful combination of American politics and American brand maintenance. In many ways, it's not a job for grown-ups. But what they experience every four days is the essential truth that confronts my sportswriting colleagues every day—namely, the people you cover do not need you. They do not need you to get out the messages they want to get out. They do not need you to sell themselves. And the elite political press especially has lost the unique purchase within the system that it once had. In truth, it's squandered it by degrees over the past several decades. How much of a tragedy you think that is depends vitally on how willing you are to buy into the essential threadbare illusions that remain.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a35082/hillary-rodham-clinton-declines-to-meet-the-press/