USA Today’s website today has a list of “5 must-read books about the Obama-Romney race,” and as you might expect, there are four books by liberal political reporters: “Collision 2012" by Dan Balz, “The Message” by Richard Wolffe, “The Center Holds” by Jonathan Alter, and “Double Down” by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann (due out in November).
But there’s a dash of balance: “Collusion” by L. Brent Bozell and Tim Graham, “A conservative perspective on the media's election impact.” Kristen Mascia explained the choice:
Written by L. Brent Bozell, the president of the conservative-leaning content analysis organization The Media Research Center, and his MRC colleague, media analyst Tim Graham, Collusion centers around the role of the media in the outcome of the 2012 presidential election. As their book's title suggests, Bozell and Graham argue that liberal bias was rife in the coverage of the election, citing, for example, stories about Texas Governor Rick Perry's curiously named ranch, Herman Cain's sexual harassment flap and a slew of unflattering tales about Romney.
You can go to mediacollusion.com if you haven't grabbed Bozell and Graham's "must read" book yet.
Mascia explained Alter's claim that Obama was "the center":
Alter trains his eye on the Obama Administration, drawing on more than 200 interviews to outline the challenges the President and his team faced, including a Congress in turmoil--and arguing that, ultimately, moderates prevailed on election night: "The radical right that would have been vindicated and emboldened by a sweeping Republican victory sees the government as 'them.' I make no apologies for suggesting that the United States dodged a bullet in 2012 by rejecting this extremist view of our 225-year experiment in democracy," he writes. "We are a centrist nation."
