To try to be authentic these days, to ask questions of the people in power - it's difficult. This administration has evolved new techniques to handle people like me. Their strategy, in a word, is simple: ignore them.

The fact is that in a way, journalists become a kind of default in the system when you don't have substantive two-party back-and-forth inside of the government.

The fact is, most journalists I know are not particularly political. They move around a lot.

Wars tend to be very public things, they are visible. There are correspondents traveling with the troops and you get daily dispatches.