The new media can certainly react more quickly than the old media did. But speed is not always a virtue. Rushing to be first can mean rushing bad information into publication—particularly if, say, the information is based on one source that doesn't know as much as he or she thinks. And for all of the policy expertise some of us brought to the discussion, most of us—and I’d certainly put myself at the top of the list—were and still are relative novices at covering the political process itself.

Cohn and Ezra Klein were invaluable resources for me in understanding the debate, and I think he gives a pretty decent assessment of the strengths and weaknesses in the media's coverage, though he doesn't address how the debate was covered like a horse race by much of the news media, and what effect that had on the eventual product.