By the 1990s and 2000s, the new model for political reporting was found in books like Primary Colors or Game Change, which celebrated politicians and their aides, and looked at things from their point of view. Leadership was hard! If a candidate had to fib or back off a campaign promise, the new generation of scribes explained a politician’s job was to accept the “burden of morally ambiguous compromise.” Reporters were forever trying to re-create the American Camelot. In each presidential race, any halfway decent-looking young Democrat was described as “Kennedyesque.” In 2004, both Democratic
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