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Opinion: Tony Pierce chats with The Ticket about The Ticket, Obama, Ron Paul and a couple other things

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Tony Pierce, the LATimes.com blog boss and famous busblogger, chats with The Ticket about its just-passed third birthday, as recorded here on Friday.

Pierce: Andrew Malcolm, Happy 3rd Birthday for the Ticket!

AM: Hey, thanks a lot. It seems like only 1,096 days since we started. More than 7,000 items. About 49,000 Twitter followers @latimestot And about 120,000 comments. It’s a great team here. I’ve had wonderful partners in Don Frederick and Johanna Neuman and now Jimmy Orr, plus numerous LATimes colleagues. I have never in all my too-many years in journalism had so much fun.

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Pierce: Who’s responsible for allowing you to start the Ticket? Many of your fans, and especially your critics would love to know!

AM: A former LATimes editor named Doug Frantz asked me to study politics blogs and design one that I would like to write. It was pretty depressing at first. But then I realized I could invent whatever. So we designed a blog that plays off the political news, tries to explain how politics works, is unpredictable in subject and has fun. And lets readers see and share the fun.

Pierce: What was one of your first ‘ah-ha’ moments on the Ticket where you turned the corner from being depressed to being the excited person we now know?

AM: Well, I’ve written 10 books, so I was comfortable allowing more of a personal voice to come through than in print journalism. There was a moment, probably with Ron Paul’s supporters, that....

...I discovered the freshness of almost live exchanges with the readers. Using in-jokes. Code words for regulars. Past references to favorite phrases. Throwing in little comments. We turned the old-fashioned, robotic inverted pyramid newspaper writing into more of a conversation with friends at a sidewalk cafe. And readers responded by 100s of thousands. So just like back in sixth grade Show & Tell, when the class laughed, I did more of it. Did I mention, I have never had more fun?

Pierce: Speaking of Paul. You know a thing or two about successful conservatives. Why do you think Dr. Paul didn’t get the GOP nomination, He certainly had a lot of money and online support.

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AM: Well, for starters he came up about 1,100 delegates short at the convention. It seems to me though some of the energy and determination and conservative drive of his supporters--you know, they’d go out in mid-winter for 4 hour shifts on the Interstate bridge just holding a Paul sign -- I think that was a strong influence on driving the GOP back from its more liberal spending was of the latter Bush years more toward its conservative roots that we now see in the Tea Party. Combined with the amazing spending of the new administration to starken -- is that a word? -- the philosophical divide.

And if you think about it, that’s actually what a two-party system is supposed to do -- one on one side and one on the other. Both cheating toward the middle in general elections.

Pierce: Do you approve the thousands of comments on the Ticket?

AM: It varies. These days I do almost all of them and often add little comments back to keep the chatter going. I really enjoy the reader feedback, especially on Twitter. Twenty-six-plus years in print journalism I never happened upon anyone outside my family reading my stuff. Online we can see within minutes as people start to come and read. At times we’ve had 30 new readers per second arriving on the blog. And that can go on for hours.

Pierce: Name three bloggers you currently read who you enjoy who you would have never read if you had remained a print journalist as opposed to the main blogger of The Ticket.
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AM: There are so many. Ed Morrissey at HotAir, Melissa Clouthier at LibertyPundits.com, Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake is one of the most thoughtful and committed people online. RealClearPolitics is an amazing online political resource. A daily must-read. Mike Allen at Politico. I follow Jake Tapper and Chuck Todd on Twitter closely and Rick Klein at ABC. Ryan Grim at HuffPo. So many on all sides.

Pierce: A critic recently asked hypothetically why you hate President Obama. What do you think Mr. Obama’s biggest success has been so far.
AM: Really? We have a critic? And here I thought Pres. Who’s-Its was going to change all this harsh political criticism. I love the guy. And, let’s be honest, there’s not that much to write about Pres. McCain. The Republicans are still trying to assemble their act, for Sarah’s sake. I wrote once their DC leadership makes Benadryl seem like a stimulant.

I’ve spent probably a quarter-century covering Chicago politics. I’ve got prep school classmates in Chicago politics. It’s the most amazing culture to study and watch. Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, was a go-fer for the Democratic machine in the 1980s. He used to stop by my office and try trade a free lunch for gossip about the pols in the machine. I learned a lot. Now he’s Obama’s chief of staff; it’s the same crowd and culture.

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And, come on, when a pie-loving cigarette smoker comes up with an alleged health agenda for everyone else down to federal guidelines for local restaurant menus, how can you not call him the Smoker-in-Chief?

Pierce: So what was his biggest success so far? Healthcare? Pulling the economy away from the brink of disaster?
AM: Good question. It’s so early yet for Obama. He’s not even halfway, though 60% already said they don’t want a second Obama term. I don’t buy that, yet. He’s not a quitter.

In a strange way Obama’s biggest success so far may have been getting elected president, taking the country past what used to be a color barrier, igniting a sense of palpable hope among millions.

Truth is, no one is going to change the harsh partisan ways of Washington. He knew that. He promised too much. So Obama’s greatest success, getting elected, may actually be impossible for him to beat. He created too great hope.

So now somehow he’s got to recalibrate the public’s expectations so he has a chance of meeting them.

It might be too late; we’Il see. Anecdotally, a lot of Obama people have fallen out of love. Took them longer than if they hadn’t been so invested in the hopey-changey. Despite Rush Limbaugh, nobody really wants any president to fail. ‘Cause then in a way we all do. The drama of telling political stories comes in relating how the person who got elected and all the wannabes handle the pressures of the job and the quest. The choices they make, the words they use.

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Americans are very trusting and very smart. Over time they figure things and people out. There’s plenty of time left for Obama to succeed. The pols at the federal level are special talents.

Pierce: OK, last question. What do you want to do in the next year on the Ticket that you haven’t yet done in the previous years?
AM: Oh, boy. Part of the immense fun of this job is going places I’ve never been, big and small. I’ve not done, for instance, one of these Google chats. So I want to do more of them if readers respond. I’m doing regular podcasts now each week. I don’t even know what I’m going to be writing about this evening let alone next month. I didn’t know we were going to be doing this 30 minutes ago. I like the unpredictability and hope readers do too.

To me , that’s the thrill of this work, the serendipity, not knowing that at 1:12 p.m. every day I’m going to be doing the same thing. I was worried before starting about doing four-to-five items a day. My son who’s been online many years, said don’t worry. He was right. I start each day with probably five or six ideas. I write a bunch and I end up with a list of 10 more and the frustration is I cant get done in 16 hours what I really want to.

But there’s always the next item. And the next day. ####

Speaking of next items, click here to receive Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item. Follow us @latimestot Or Like our Facebook page right here. We’re also available on Kindle now right here. (With a free two-week trial.)

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