100 News Cycles Later

[Commentary] During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama made clear his distaste of the news cycle and its trivial obsessions. Skeptics said this would hurt his chances: that to win, a candidate must dominate the news day-by-day, minute-by-minute, with attacks that keep the opposition off-balance. Yet the Obama campaign managed to win by emphasizing a longer-term strategy over the hair-trigger approach. But on Jan. 20, for all intents and purposes President Obama became the news cycle. His ambitions for toning down Washington's nasty partisan warfare -- and with that, creating better prospects for his agenda -- depend on his ability to nudge the news cycle away from the cable network- and Drudge-driven obsession with transient panics and cultural outrages. On that front, he's been only partially successful so far. But more so than many of us thought going in.