Horse Race Coverage Obscures Obama’s Governing Abilities

Did you know that while an Illinois Senator that Barack Obama successfully passed major bills on crime, ethics, campaign finance reform, and low wage work? And that these accomplishments reveal his experience and ability in working across party lines to craft solutions to complex problems?

The reason you don’t know these things things is in part a function of the horse race coverage that has dominated this presidential race at a historically unprecedented level.

Charles Peters, the founding editor of the Washington Monthly, makes this exact point in an op-ed published at the Washington Post today. As Peters concludes:

I do not think that a candidate’s legislative record is the only measure of presidential potential, simply that Obama’s is revealing enough to merit far more attention than it has received. Indeed, the media have been equally delinquent in reporting the legislative achievements of Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, both of whom spent years in the U.S. Senate. The media should compare their legislative records to Obama’s, devoting special attention to their heart-and-soul bills and how effective each was in actually making law.