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January 04, 2006

Comments

Yes. Fineman is totally insipid, as is his employer MSGOP. It's Good if they don't understand the imploding of the Repugnicans. A third party candidacy with exasperated GOP'rs will deliver the election to the Democrats. (think Perot in '92).

"Shouldn't political writers have to understand freshman-level political science?"

You would hope so, eh?

Similarly, I've been frustrated by political pundits pretending to be FISA experts or Constitutional scholars (NSA scandal). And I've been frustrated by pundits pretending to have any knowledge about the military (TANG scandal). Or pundits who claim some high-level structural engineering knowledge (NO Levees). Or those who claim to know when the world's oil is going to run out (were they trained in petroleum engineering or geology?), or those who pontificate about housing costs (did they work at HUD or have a degree in economics), or even, dare I say it, those who claim to know anything about the ethics of journalism.

The list goes on and on, Brendan, but I'd like to know, since you acknowledge that a pundit shouldn't write about a topic without some college-level schooling, what areas will you now stay away from because you weren't trained in that field?

What makes Fineman's article even worse is that many states (exactly how many I don't know) have "sore loser laws", which prevent someone who lost a nomination campaign from mounting a bid as an independent. So, even if one thinks that McCain COULD win as an independent, he certainly could not do it as an independent AFTER running and losing as a Republican.

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