Some answers from CBS News’ Maria Gavrilovic and John Bentley:
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PERSONAL NOTE: From the standpoint of someone who is a political junkie, a former political science major, a former full-time journalist and a blogger who wrote extensively on this campaign there were several truths that I took from this year:
1. Barack Obama exceeded initial expectations and showed how someone who harnessed the new technology, offered a consistent message and ran a disciplined campaign could prevail and give the conventional wisdom a collective red face.
2. John McCain showed the perils of tinkering with a name brand. He spent much of the past few years walking on the tightrope — trying to keep his appeal to independent and centrist voters base while also trying to woo the social conservative Republican voters and GOP establishment which destroyed him politically in his 2000 presidential run. He finally jumped — not fell — off the tightrope, landing on the right, lost control of his image and his brand name was ruined as he became fixated on his party’s base..becoming seemingly alien to many of those who fervently supported him in 2000.
3. Obama reportedly kept his distance from the press corps but didn’t aggravate them since there was no substantive shift as the campaign went on in the way he dealt with the press. McCain made a major shift, freezing out (and often blasting) the press after July, after having been one of journalists’ most accessible and beloved politicos. A huge mistake (which we noted at the time). Obama didn’t take anything away from the press; McCain did. Any reporter will tell you that having direct access to prime sources may not change the reporting of a story, but it could influence how reporters perceive a story if they are locked out from hearing first hand from the primary sources. In addition to squandering his imagery, McCain squandered a still potentially advantageous relationship with reporters covering his campaign.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.