We Don't Need No Stinkin' Primaries!

More than a year before the 2008 election and before a single primary vote has been cast, the Washington Consensus, for what it's worth, seems to be coalescing around a Clinton/Giuliani matchup. One key indicator is how the big papers direct their investigative resources, leading to articles like WaPo's extended profile on Giuliani's indoctrination into the world of conservative activism, and the Times' study of Hillary's managerial style.

Giuliani comes across as surprisingly pliable when it comes to ideas new to him ("I've got to tell you, I don't think he understands what the Steve Forbes flat tax proposal is," says one AEI resident scholar) under the onslaught of people like Grover Norquist, Norman Podhoretz, Steve Forbes, John Bolton, Jack Keane and Fred Kagan. Trying desperately to prove he's a "real" Republican and finding no welcome among evangelicals, Rudy has shacked up with the the bomb-Iran, supply-sider wingnuts, who for their part appear to have found a horse worth latching onto.

For her part, Clinton sounds like the kind of focused, data-driven manager that a certain 2000 presidential candidate from Texas promised he would be. From the Times we learn that:

[Clinton] presides over an office of intense and focused workaholics, protective of their patron and wary of outsiders, a trait that has drawn comparisons to the leadership team of George W. Bush. The president surrounded himself with advisers who went back to his Texas days and were similarly lauded for loyalty and criticized for insularity.

Unsourced, passive-voice characterizations like one this bug me. Who, exactly, is drawing these comparisons between Hillary and Dubya's leadership team? Water cooler gossip? A recent book? Op-eds? The beltway commentariat? Or maybe a journalist on deadline looking for a quick and easy simile?