R&R: Theories of attention

The magic of a cable news hit.

Good morning and welcome back to R&R, my private recap and recommendations email for paid subscribers.

I’ll have more recommendations further down, but here’s one piece of journalism that stuck with me this week, via the New York Times: “Tim Walz’s Sudden Rise in the Democratic Party Was No Accident” (gift link).

Shortly before Walz was tapped as Kamala Harris’ running mate, Ezra Klein, a Times opinion columnist, had Walz on his show. “I don’t think anybody else in the party has shot as rapidly from somebody who fairly few people had heard of…to somebody that all of a sudden is on the shortlist,” Klein said.

But vice presidential nominations don’t fall out of coconut tree. In this case, as the above Times article lays out, Walz’s was the product of a months-long media tour, from honing his now-famous “weird” messaging as far back as February to blitzing 12 TV interviews in the week after President Biden left the race. (Not to mention several “long interviews on influential liberal podcasts.” Yes, Klein was every bit a part of the phenomenon he praised.)

What I like about the Times article is that it shows that very little in politics happens by accident: politicians who seemingly come out of nowhere almost never do. And it also serves as a useful glimpse into the media channels by which political power is now accumulated.

Interestingly, the new power channels look a lot like the old ones: namely, cable news. Although famously grappling with a shrinking and aging audience, cable news networks still retain latent influence in the political sphere. For proof, look only to the two most recent dramas that played out in the Democratic Party.