Ryan Lizza on a Second Term and Political Journalism

I haven't yet read Ryan Lizza's New Yorker piece What Would a Second Obama Term Bring?, but this interview with him was very good, The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza: Twitter, Gaffe Obsession Creating ‘Crisis For Political Journalism’.

"So that’s the analogy that several people in the White House used. No, it’s not like conservatives are suddenly going to change their minds about anything. Since 2009, their strategy has been don’t cooperate, just defeat Obama in his reelection. Okay if that doesn’t work, what’s plan B? Plan B might be, because of this massive fiscal cliff, let’s get the best deal we can, Obama’s not going to get credit for it because he’s a lame duck now anyway. One person told me the optimal political circumstances are Obama is at the peak of his political powers and the Republicans knowing that, he would get the least political credit for a victory. You might have that if he wins. That’s the optimistic case. I think if you’re in the White House, you have to be somewhat optimistic. It’s not like they’re assuming that’s going to happen, that’s their sort of, you know, you’ve got to hope.

On the other side, conservatives may decide Romney was too moderate, the lesson of the election is he didn’t oppose Obama enough or he was too liberal. If you’re conservative, you can make the argument that Romney lost because he wasn’t conservative enough. And then you might think, all right, let’s stick to the same strategy we’ve been using the last few years."

Also...

"People genuinely do not think it is in their interest — both White House and campaign officials, both campaigns, it’s not a partisan thing at all, it’s Democrats and Republicans — they genuinely do not believe it’s in their interest to talk in an unguarded way. Because even if they trust you to get the context 100 percent right, it doesn’t matter, because they know that a liberal or conservative blog, or a campaign ad, will just grab something out of context and run with it and create some damaging meme. I’ve been doing this for 15 years, and it’s worse now than it’s ever been. If you think about it from their perspective for a second, you can’t totally blame them. Lately I’ve realized it’s harder than it’s ever been, and these campaigns want to exercise complete and total message discipline."