Breaking -- Strategy dominates political news

Quick. To the Situation Room, for some no spin Hardball, or whatever.

The Pew Research Center is out with a report on news coverage of the 2012 presidential primary campaign. As the graph above shows, campaign strategy is our favorite thing to ceaselessly chronicle:

Overall, 64% of campaign coverage examined was framed around polls, advertising, fundraising, strategy and the constant question of who is winning and who is losing. There was only one month studied, November 2011, when strategy, tactics and money made up less than 60% of the coverage studied. That month they accounted for 41% and the examination of the candidates' personal histories accounted for another 39%. Of particular focus that month was Romney's Mormon faith, Gingrich's marital history and Santorum's religious beliefs. By contrast, the focus on strategy, tactics and money reached its peak in March, when about three-quarters (74%) of the coverage was devoted to those subjects.

The candidates personal history, religion, marriages, dog transport methods, etc., got 12 percent of the coverage. Stuff like "Domestic issues," and "foreign issues" drew less (yawn) journalistic interest.

There are some good reasons. There's less issue difference among primary candidates, so strategy and background get attention. And not all strategy coverage is inside baseball or fluff. How campaigns operate can reveal a lot about the true nature and abilities of a candidate. Campaign finance is a big story this cycle. (And, yes, I fully realize my own proclivity for superficial politics.)

But, hey, this is an improvement. Four years ago, according to Pew, 80 percent of the coverage was about strategy.

Still, you're much more likely to hear who's up in the latest tracking poll than you are to hear a good, clear explanation of how dismantling health reform, overhauling Medicare or bombing Iran would affect the country. Improvement or not, I think the graph above is one explanation for why lots of people don't find politics to be the least bit relevant to their lives. Instead of digging for more substance, some folks just tune out.

And, unfortunately, that fits perfectly with the strategies Steven Pearlstein's recent WaPo piece says our politicians have now embraced - intensely negative campaigns that turn off many voters in the middle while ginning up base partisan outrage and the money that flows from it. And we know how that's working out:

The irony is that the politicians who prevail in these gladiator contests inherit a system so bitter, so partisan and so ideologically polarized that they can't accomplish anything. They know that they and their constituents would be better off if they cooperated and compromised more, but they just can't. If they try, they face a serious risk of being run out of office, either in the next primary by someone who better appeals to the party's political base, or in the general election by an opponent whose extremism has allowed him or her to energize the other side's core voters.

Politics has become a tragedy - a tragedy of the commons, that is. The individual pursuit of rational self-interest by parties and politicians, which in political and economic theory is supposed to generate the best outcome, has instead led to a cycle in which extremism, partisanship and stalemate all beget more of the same. We keep thinking it can't continue like this, but it only gets worse.

So strategy reporting plays into political strategy. Stunning. But what I really want to know is how this whole thing will play with white working class males, and whether it has implications for 2016. Kidding.

Some interesting stuff. Thoughts?