Politics and Political Pundits

So I should put a disclaimer on everything I've said up till now. The partisan divides touted by the media are by no means as clear in the actual political spectrum as they seem to appear from the outside. The two party system is seen as an effective way to summarize debates to the public and force compromise within and between parties. In reality there is no left and right. There are a plethora of issues and perspectives that betray such a two dimensional portrayal. I don't have the time or knowledge to do justice to the complexities of each debate but a rough and incomplete outline of guiding ideologies would look something like this:

Foreign policy: neo-liberalism, institutionalism, constructivism, realism, neo-realism, and neo-conservativism

Domestic economic policy: interventionist (industrial policies, supply-side economics, redistribution of wealth...) non interventionist (libertarianism, deregulation...)

Jurisprudence: natural law, legal positivism, legal realism, and critical legalism

Many more could be included in this list each with its own innumerable subcategories and further they can exists together on different levels. For example, as it has been suggested in a Washington Post article, while Obama pursues distributional policies on a tactical level his strategic goal is free market libertarianism. Moreover on top of this there are lobbies in each district, state, and on the federal level each with competing or colluding interests with which each politician must contend.

Of course you'd never guess at this complexity from watching cable news where up to 195mil Americans get there news each month (Pew research poll). Here its all about personality and they benefit from keeping the debate as emotive and two-dimensional as possible. the media sanctioned "leaders of opinion" by viewership (with analysis at the right):

On the left:

Keith Olbermann (MSNBC) The New Yorker

Rachel Maddow (MSNBC) The Observer

Chris Matthews (MSNBC)

On the right:

Bill O'Reilly (FOX) Rolling Stone

Sean Hannity (FOX) CBS

Glenn Beck (FOX) Time Magazine

Lou dobbs (CNN) New Yorker

To better summarize their views I'll put up this video by Charlie Brooker from BBC4's Newswipe. Enjoy: