And - they're off!

I had to chuckle at David Corn's piece today about the prospect of Congress shutting down the government. Corn's op-ed is headlined: "Government Shutdown: Who Wins -- or Loses?" The real answer is: The Press. You could float the Titanic on the amount of digital ink the media generates on this confrontation between the Republican-controlled House and the White House. Corn is a good opinion journalist and, for political junkies, his piece (focused mostly on Speaker Boehner's strategy) is worth reading. Still, this approach to the story is emblematic of the Washington press corps' obsession with the political horse race -- i.e., who's up, who's down, who's winning or losing. Most Americans don't care about the sausage-making. They do care about the meaty content. But that's exactly what gets lost in process stories like Corn's.