Last night at New York City’s famed Rainbow Room atop 30 Rockefeller Plaza, Sir Harold Evans, editor at large of The Week magazine, led a panel of media’s most influential in dissecting both the presidential campaigns of Obama, McCain and Clinton, as well as the media’s role in the events leading up to last Tuesday’s historic win by Barack Obama. On the panel was wowOwow’s own Lesley Stahl of "60 Minutes," Dan Rather of HDNews, Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s "Morning Joe," Jacob Weisberg of Slate.com and the Democratic operative Bob Shrum and Republican operative Ed Rollins.  

According to this panel, the differences in the operational effectiveness of the two campaigns played importantly in the election’s outcome. The Obama campaign, it was agreed, was a model of professionalism: unity and cohesiveness among the leadership, consistent, on-point messaging, effective and imaginative use of the new media’s power to organize and raise funds, etc. The McCain campaign, in contrast, was characterized as lacking in cohesive messaging, a lack of unity at the top levels of the operation and a "circa 1995" utilization of new media (and not such great use of traditional media, either).  

The panel also dissected the role of media bias in the election’s outcome. Both Dan Rather and Jacob Weisberg remarked on a kind of "secular" media bias, one that is not driven by ideology. In Dan Rather’s view, it was "journalism’s love of the new" that drove the media’s embrace of the Obama "story." Weisberg referred to a media bias for whatever story that sells papers (and presumably, drives online page views at Slate), as opposed to a philosophical bias on the part of the media.

Hillary Clinton and her failed run for the presidency was also dissected by the panel. Bob Shrum noted that the Clinton campaign (like the McCain effort) completely misread the country’s desire for change and, instead, ran as an establishment "ready on day one" candidate, a choice which ultimately undid her chances. Both Shrum and Weisberg noted that media bias actually helped Hillary, and kept her in the race long after it was obvious she had no chance of winning the number of needed delegates.

Lesley Stahl remarked, "As a woman, whether you liked her or not, her great campaign proved that a woman could be president. We were proud of her."

On Obama’s surge as the economic problems facing the country became more evident, Joe Scarborough’s take was, "When things get serious, people want serious people on the stage … after the economy hit, Palin was over." According to Rather, Obama has the power to persuade and inspire. "Restoring trust … the No. 1 priority, and he had it."