Is Judd-gment Day Coming this Spring?

Morning Jolt – March 11, 2013 By Jim Geraghty Good morning. Here's your Monday Morning Jolt. Enjoy! Jim Is Judd-gment Day Coming this Spring? So, actress Ashley Judd is preparing to run for Senate . . . or perhaps not. Actress Ashley Judd, who has reportedly been exploring a Senate run since last December, will announce her candidacy in the spring, MSNBC's Howard Fineman reported Sunday. Her candidacy would pit her against Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. The 44-year-old star of "Double Jeopardy" also has a master's degree in public administration from Harvard University and has been a women's rights activist for years. She had met with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., to talk about women running for office more than a year ago, Fineman reported. In a statement to The Huffington Post, Judd denied that she was planning on making announcements any time soon. "I am not sure who is saying this stuff, but it is not I!" Judd said to the website. "I'd prefer as a fan of your journalism that you stay accurate and credible. We told everyone who called us yesterday these stories are fabrications." Are Washington Democrats suddenly nervous about Ashley Judd as their standard-bearer? A Louisville newspaper is reporting that's exactly the case: LEO Weekly has learned from multiple Democratic sources that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is now applying the brakes to their once all-in support of Ashley Judd as the challenger of choice against Sen. Mitch McConnell in 2014. While not ready to abandon Judd, they are now taking a serious second look at recruiting Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes. The change of heart came after a recent poll the DSCC conducted, but not because it showed Judd was incapable of competing with McConnell, rather that Grimes performed better than Judd and gave Democrats the best chance at victory. As late as last week, the wheels were already very much in motion at the DSCC in planning a Judd Senate candidacy. While those plans have not been scrapped, there is definitely a re-evaluation happening. Our sources tell LEO that while the DSCC felt that Judd could compete with McConnell, one of Judd's strongest assets would be her ability to raise money on par with McConnell and tie up Republican campaign spending (both McConnell's and the NRSC's) in that race. However, their recent polling suggests the 2014 race is very much winnable, with McConnell so vulnerable that Democrats need to make their priority finding the candidate with the best chance of winning. For what it's worth, Guy Cecil, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, tweeted, "In my time with the DSCC,  I think 85 percent of all recruitment theories and stories have been wrong. It'll make for a good story when I'm done next November."  A bit of DSCC caution makes sense, no? Kentucky Democrats are a different breed. With one interruption — Ernie Fletcher from 2003 to 2007 —  Democrats have occupied the governor's mansion since 1971. But in the senatorial races, where national issues are more likely to predominate the campaigns, Republicans have won every race since 1992. Right now, five of the six U.S. House members from the state are Republicans. So you would think Democrats would want someone who could run the "I'm nothing like Obama"-type campaign that works for Democrats in places like West Virginia and Utah. One look at the American Crossroads Web ad knocking Judd and you know you're dealing with a potential candidate who will be extremely popular with Democrats outside of Kentucky . . . but inside the state, perhaps not so much. Long-Form Artistic Journalism, and Our Modern Media World Friday afternoon, my dander was up over a column by Mark Judge, a Georgetown professor and contributor to RealClearBooks: Conservative journalism, which in many ways is stronger and better than it has ever been, is nonetheless missing something crucial. It is missing a literary voice. This became clear when I was reading Athwart History: Half a Century of Polemics, Animadversions, and Illuminations, a William F. Buckley omnibus that collects some of the late conservative icon's best writing. Reconnecting with Buckley's wonderful prose revealed something quite clearly: conservative journalism has plenty of pit bulls, but it lacks show dogs. It needs some graceful writers. Conservative journalists at places like Breitbart, the Weekly Standard and National Review -- the magazine Buckley founded -- are skilled at lawyerly argument, at performing surgery on the bias of the mainstream media. But they haven't developed their muscles for artistic long form journalism. S.E. Cupp is not Joan Didion, and Rich Lowry is not Tom Wolfe. Since the deaths of William F. Buckley, Jeane Kirkpatrick and Richard John Neuhaus, the conservative media is in desperate need of a journalistic poet -- an experienced Jonathan Franzen or a young Christopher Hitchens. Or another Whittaker Chambers, whose journalism ranks with some of the best of the 20th century. Now, I could fume at a psychologically unhealthy length about how tired and cheap I find the "[modern figure] is not [beloved late figure]" critique of conservative journalism. I could point out that I don't think S. E. Cupp wants to be Joan Didion, nor does Rich Lowry want to be Tom Wolfe (although I haven't asked either of them about their long-term career goals). I could froth at the mouth a bit at how infuriating the "well, you're no William F. Buckley" criticism is for anybody at National Review, because no, none of us is WFB and none of us will be and most of us would be fools to try. It's like saying they don't make presidents like George Washington anymore, or they just aren't making basketball players like Michael Jordan these days. Go figure, unique talents turn out to be unique. But instead of all that, let me point to two little anecdotes to illuminate the media environment that the great poetic long-form journalists of the past flourished, and the media environment of today. Let John Podhoretz paint a picture of the media world of a few decades ago. He's discussing the world of weekly news magazines, but the resources and publishing schedule were probably comparable for most magazines (and remember, there was no Web then): [In 1982], I began my professional career at Time Magazine as a reporter-researcher in the World section, which was devoted to international news. Generally speaking, the World section ran 12 pages in the magazine. Nation, devoted to news within our borders, ran about the same or a page shorter. Think of that—an American publication, marketed to millions, that devoted slightly more of its attention, and vastly more of its budget, to news about events outside the United States. Time Inc., the parent company of Time, was flush then. Very, very, very flush. So flush that the first week I was there, the World section had a farewell lunch for a writer who was being sent to Paris to serve as bureau chief . . . at Lutece, the most expensive restaurant in Manhattan, for 50 people. So flush that if you stayed past 8, you could take a limousine home . . . and take it anywhere, including to the Hamptons if you had weekend plans there. So flush that if a writer who lived, say, in suburban Connecticut, stayed late writing his article that week, he could stay in town at a hotel of his choice. So flush that, when I turned in an expense account covering my first month with a $32 charge on it for two books I'd bought for research purposes, my boss closed her office door and told me never to submit a report asking for less than $300 back, because it would make everybody else look bad. So flush that when its editor-in-chief, the late Henry Grunwald, went to visit the facilities of a new publication called TV Cable Week that was based in White Plains, a 40 minute drive from the Time Life Building, he arrived by helicopter—and when he grew bored by the tour, he said to his aide, "Get me my helicopter." Then there's this portrait of life over at Politico from 2010. ARLINGTON, Va. — In most newsrooms, the joke would have been obvious. It was April Fools' Day last year, and Politico's top two editors sent an e-mail message to their staff advising of a new 5 a.m. start time for all reporters. "These pre-sunrise hours are often the best time to reach top officials or their aides," the editors wrote, adding that reporters should try to carve out personal time "if you need it," in the mid-afternoon when Internet traffic slows down. But rather than laugh, more than a few reporters stared at the e-mail message in a panicked state of disbelief. "There were several people who didn't think it was a joke. One girl actually cried," said Anne Schroeder Mullins, who wrote for Politico until May, when she left to start her own public relations firm. "I definitely had people coming up to me asking me if it was true." Such is the state of the media business these days: frantic and fatigued. Young journalists who once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story are instead shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a fresh thought or be first to report even the smallest nugget of news — anything that will impress Google algorithms and draw readers their way. Mind you, not every publication has the obsessive-compulsive workaholic culture of Politico, but the pace isn't terribly different at any Web-based publication. A couple years ago, I met a distinguished columnist in a news network green room. This columnist is generally left-of-center, a Pulitzer winner, and the nicest guy you would ever want to meet. He seemed vaguely familiar with me as one of those blogger-types and as we were chatting, he said something like, "boy, I don't know how you do it. I have a hard enough time writing two 700-word columns per week." Maybe he's being modest, but for perspective, the Morning Jolt is usually at least 1,500 words each morning, but can sometimes go as long as 2,000 to 2,500 words. Admittedly, I'm quoting and linking to other folks, and some days . . . eh, some days are better than others. But it was an amazing reflection of the old expectations of production from a big-name journalist. I suppose if all you have to produce in your full-time job is 1,400 words a week, they had better be 1,400 good ones. So now I write this newsletter, blog at Campaign Spot, write other articles and conduct interviews for NRO, tape the Three Martini Lunch podcast, do the occasional television appearance and radio interview, work on that book project for Random House, and try to do most of it in between dropping off the boys at preschool and picking them up at the end of the day and the dinner's got to be heated up and I've got to get the food into them before 5:30 or they get cranky and oh, for pete's sake, no, you can not have another lox-and-cream-cheese-roll, you had one for breakfast and — SLAP! Sorry, I got carried away there. Anyway, yes, it would be wonderful if more venues had the financial resources to let a writer work, for long stretches, on what Judge calls the "honest and poetic long form journalism of the type that Buckley practiced." But very few of them do, and even if there was, it's not clear that there's a sizable audience for that type of journalism anymore. Generally speaking, the audience's attention span is shrinking, and more and more of what we write is consumed on electronic screens and social media, not on paper. Finally, what's that old saying? "Be the change you want to see in the world"? More Clucking and Oinking about 'Wacko Bird' Republicans Jeff Dobbs, over at The Voice In My Head, offers a pretty good visual to start the week. As you probably heard, Senator John McCain isn't all that enamored with some of his younger Republican colleagues: When I asked him if "these guys" — having just mentioned Amash, Cruz and Paul by name — are a "positive force" in the GOP, McCain paused for a full six seconds. "They were elected, nobody believes that there was a corrupt election, anything else," McCain said. "But I also think that when, you know, it's always the wacko birds on right and left that get the media megaphone." Plus, those "wacko birds" keep smashing down the little structures he built for the eggs: McCain has a point — they go way too far on defense cuts, particularly their recommendation to replace our nuclear arsenal with a giant slingshot. ADDENDUM: Mark your calendars for the biggest blowout bash of sequester season! Having picked up an Oscar, Adele might have thought her incredible US adventure couldn't get much better. But now I can reveal the Skyfall singer has landed the biggest gig of next year – singing for Michelle Obama during her 50th birthday party at the White House. The 24-year-old star will join Beyonce at the bash on January 17 – proof she has been given the ultimate seal of approval in the US. 'America's First Lady will be holding a huge celebrity-packed party for her birthday at the White House next year and, as she adores Adele and Beyonce, she has asked them both to sing,' says a source. Can't wait! I wonder if they'll invite any of those furloughed federal workers. Get all the latest news, 24/7, at www.NationalReview.com Save 75%... Subscribe to National Review magazine today and get 75% off the newsstand price. Click here for the print edition or here for the digital. National Review also makes a great gift! Click here to send a full-year of NR Digital or here to send the print edition to family, friends, and fellow conservatives. Conservatives – stay healthy! Get plenty of Vitamin Sea on the next National Review cruise. Visit www.NRCruise.com for complete information. National Review, Inc. Remove your email address from our list. We respect your right to privacy. View our policy. 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