Matt Bai, whose piece in the The New York Times Magazine must have driven
the Clintons a bit batty, has a small tribute to Joe Biden in the Times
online, presumably to be published in tomorrow's print
edition. Why haven't the various state electorates which Biden has
been courting given him the serious respect that he deserves? Yes,
some people--many people--say he talks too much. In my view, his
opponents talk in short-hand so that they can't be caught with fully
developed ideas. Fully developed ideas are risky precisely because
they are fully developed ideas. They are also likely to be more
truthful.
Bai puts the responsibility on the television news people and, more
specifically on the cable networks:
Ten years of endless blather about the game of politics on cable TV have trained the most engaged American voters to handicap candidates rather than hear them, to pontificate about who might win rather than deciding whom they actually want to win.
I think he's right.