Washington, DC’s weirdest and easiest to fix pathology is the habit of high-level politicians and political aides gluing their eyes to low-audience nonsense on daytime cable television. For example:
In his West Wing corner office, [William] Daley keeps his television tuned to CNBC to keep track of how the fiscal battles are playing in the financial markets.
The good news is that this makes a lot more sense than the standard DC thing of watching Fox/CNN/MSNBC. But it still doesn’t make very much sense. Short term economic performance matters a lot in politics. But that’s “short term” as in “past few quarters,” not “past few minutes.” Running the country is hard enough without distracting yourself with a lot of pointless noise.
Previous in TP Yglesias
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