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July202008

Ballyhoo at the Return of "The Campaign Trail" (For Me, Anyway)

Filed under: The Squib Report   Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hooray, the Campaign Trail podcast is back! For some reason, the July 11 podcast never loaaed into my iTunes until yesterday, when I also downloaded the July 18 edition, which means that I'd been waiting since June 26 for more of Dorothy Wickenden and the gang. For my money, The Campaign Trail and the Washington Week audio feed are the only two weekly-ish political podcasts worth the trouble. The (belated) double dip was welcome indeed.

So after a week in which we heard way too much about the cover of the magazine, let us now praise The New Yorker's indefatigable, entertaining, and, at this stage, well-nigh overlooked political team, including but not limited to Hendrik Hertzberg, John Cassidy, George Packer, Jeffrey Toobin, Elizabeth Kolbert, and, of course, Ryan Lizza, who only wrote (in the very same issue!) that great article on Barack Obama that the whole political blogosphere recognized as outstanding.

I wrote way back in 2007 that "one of the rewards of election years is the certainty of ... Lemann-esque articles" in The New Yorker, and Lizza's was just the kind of thing I meant. (Nicholas Lemann wrote terrific articles on Al Gore and George W. Bush during the 2000 campaign.)

Which reminds me: I got to see Lizza interview Rahm Emanuel at the New Yorker Conference. I didn't document it at the time, alas, but his reportorial chops were very in evidence that day. Lizza had the only interview of the conference that was newsworthy, and he knew it. He treated it as an opportunity to elicit new information, and he kept the pressure on Emanuel, and—what do you know, he committed news. By all means watch the video—you can see him trying to squeeze the most out of his allotted twenty minutes, doggedly refusing to let Emanuel off the hook. And remaining affable throughout.

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