Lessons Learned. Already.

By GAIL COLLINS
NYT

It is not too soon to consider what we’ve learned from the 2010 elections.

This is actually an old journalism trick. If you want to do a retrospective of an important event, it is really much better to do it well before the appropriate date, when you have the field all to yourself. I learned this from one of my first editors, who made me write a year-later piece about a famous murder a little more than nine months after the crime occurred. It was a big success.

So, the elections.

When we look back on the elections of 2010 — and we will look back, people, I promise you it really is going to end — we will all have our lists of best and worst moments. For best, one of my favorites was the discovery that Bill and Hillary Clinton are now the Republican Party’s favorite Democrats. You will remember Jennifer Steinhauer’s story in The Times about how Republicans in Congress are speaking nostalgically about the great bipartisanship of the Clinton years, and how Sean Hannity recently referred to the ex-president as “good old Bill.”

(More here.)