I like Amy Walter, now the editor and publisher of The Cook Political Report. I have been watching her on The PBS Newshour every Monday night for many years, usually teamed with Tamara Keith, a reporter with NPR. They disappeared briefly when Amna Nawaz and Geoff Bennett succeeded Judy Woodruff as the anchors, then reappeared shortly afterwards. I suspect viewers let it be known that they were missed. I missed them.
Walter’s strength is in poll analysis. Keith was more inclined to the political side. I thought they complemented each other well, as well as adding a fresh, more youthful perspective to the Newshour, though Walter is now 56 and Keith is now 46. That’s not really “youthful” but it is by TV news standards.
Walter is good at studying polls. Who is ahead? Who is gaining? Which states are in play? What effect will political developments have on a particular politician’s popularity or electability. She is sober and serious and objective.
What she is not good at is the politics itself. PBS is now beginning to give her more of the role played by Jonathan Capehart and David Brooks and previously by Mark Shields (whom I miss). What does it all mean? How do these recent developments fit into the overall tilt of the political landscape? Where did this come from? Where is it going? What is Trump really up to? Why is Vance such a bad pick? Where might Harris run into trouble?
In a recent telecast (August 19) at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Walter struggled and groped and poked and pumped but couldn’t stop repeating the same basic tropes and couldn’t find a breakthrough point that would give any heft to her commentary.
She was out of her depth. After rambling somewhat aimlessly for a few moments, Judy Woodruff stepped in and pointed out what a peace agreement in Gaza might mean for the Harris campaign, a very important, consequential, and neglected point. Walter missed it completely. And it struck me immediately that that was unsurprising. She could tell you how Americans feel about Hamas. She struggles to tell you why Netanyahu doesn’t really want a peace agreement, or why Trump might want Netanyahu to not agree to a ceasefire.
I regret saying it because I do like her. But this is not the first time I have watched her struggle to develop a coherent perspective recently. She also appears on Washington Week with The Atlantic and occasionally on Meet the Press and Face the Nation. And, apparently, on Fox News. I rarely think to myself, “that is a good point” or “I didn’t think of that” when she speaks. She often gropes in vain for a striking or useful point and ends up repeating what she already said or what has long been obvious: Harris will need to get more votes in Pennsylvania than Trump to win the election. We know.
I miss Mark Shields a lot. I can’t count how many times he came up with something that nobody else on the panel had thought of, which all of them immediately agree is important and useful. David Brooks is pretty good. Occasionally, he seems desperate to rescue conservatism from Donald Trump and the current joke of a Republican Party. He really likes Biden. Jonathan Capehart went off the rails when the Democrats were trying to persuade Biden to step down this year irrationally insisting that he was entitled to the nomination even though he basically hide from primary voters for a year– deceiving them about his health and acuity– and then stumbled through the worse debate performance against the worst imaginable candidate in history and followed it up with very weak public appearances when he desperately needed to prove he was fully capable.
I hope PBS takes a long sober look at Walter’s performance on these recent episodes and looks for someone else to provide commentary. Walter should stick to the polls.