Savviness is what journalists admire in others. Savvy is what they themselves dearly wish to be. (And to be unsavvy is far worse than being wrong.) Savviness—that quality of being shrewd, practical, well-informed, perceptive, ironic, “with it,” and unsentimental in all things political—is, in a sense, their professional religion. They make a cult of it. And it was this cult that Karl Rove understood and exploited for political gain.

What is the truest mark of savviness? Winning, of course! Everyone knows that the press admires an unprincipled winner. (Of a piece with its fixation on the horse race.) Josh Green, a reporter for the Atlantic Monthly who actually took the time to understand Karl Rove’s career, totaled up his winnings in a 2004 article (“Karl Rove in a Corner,” subscribers only.)

HARWOOD: I'm going to defend that [cleavage] column too. When you look at the calculation that goes into everything that Hillary Clinton does, for her to argue that she was not aware of what she was communicating by her dress is like Barry Bonds saying he thought he was rubbing down with flaxseed oil, OK?

A final thought: The political press is absolutely head over heels for Huckabee. (There were high-fives all around when it became clear he'd finish second.) He's a genuinely endearing guy who can banter with the best of them--watching him with reporters brings to mind the old black and white footage of Babe Ruth jawboning with sportswriters. When you add that to the political media's general affinity for underdogs, you can see how Huckabee's about to enjoy some serious media afterglow, which will only further boost his profile.


Update: A couple of commenters have asked about the high-fiving I describe when the press corps realized Huckabee had taken second. I'd intended this to be hyperbolic, but now that I read it again maybe the hyperbole isn't so obvious.

Anyway, the point was just that there was much rejoicing among the press over Huckabee's showing. I talked to four or five other reporters about Huckabee yesterday. All of them were down when it looked like he might not make it out of Ames. These same people were pretty giddy once the results came in. (I'd love to name names, but nothing good would come of that for any of us...)

There is a difference in the political reality: fairly or unfairly, a healthy chunk of the national political press corps doesn't like John Edwards.

Fairly or unfairly, there's also a difference in narrative timing: when the first quarter ended, the press was trying to bury Edwards.

The morning after Romney's blunder, The Boston Globe, Newsday, the Chicago Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel ran brief, 100-200-word items about it. USA Today included just a couple of sentences about the gaffe at the bottom of a longer Romney campaign report.

Incredibly, those were the only major American newspapers in the country to touch on the story in real time. I have a hard time imagining the same deafening silence would have met Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) or John Edwards if they had made such dismissive and condescending remarks as suggesting their children served their country not by serving in the military, but by working the rope line on their parents' campaigns.

Keep in mind that Romney was crisscrossing Iowa for the entire week, which meant reporters had opportunities to ask the candidate follow-up questions about his controversial remarks prior to the Iowa straw poll. From what I can determine, no journalist did that for days.

The issue, though, clearly struck a nerve with voters who, three times in three days, pressed Romney about his sons not serving in the military. Still, journalists descending into Iowa last week by the plane-load to cover the straw vote couldn't have cared less.