Mitt Romney’s campaign begins to leak; in 2012 post-mortems don’t even require a corpse – Spectator Blogs

One of the truths about campaign reporting is that results determine everything. That is, winners are treated as superstars, losers as dimwits. Winning campaigns are always focused, disciplined, well-organised, in-control, cool; losing campaigns are invariably dysfunctional, confused, prone to internecine warfare and staffed by borderline psychopaths.

That’s how the insta-historians in the press and blogosphere score these events. If Hillary Clinton had defeated Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary her campaign staff would have been treated more kindly (even Mark Penn!) while the Obama campaign would have been written-up as, at best, a heroic, noble effort in the face of impossible odds. More probably, he’d have been castigated for failing to throw enough punches.

A lot of the time this is really not much more than waiting for the roulette wheel to cease spinning before pronouncing one set of gamblers soothsayers and the other mob schmucks.