Michael Goldfarb, ex-journalist

Formerly of the Weekly Standard, now writing online press releases for John McCain.

Crossing that line should be a one-way trip, but it's not. In Washington, there's a revolving door between the political press, campaign operatives, and administration officialdom. This is why so much political journalism reeks to high heaven -- this week's reporter is next week's speechwriter, next month's administration staffer and next year's columnist -- and it's kind of hard to do independent reporting about a candidate the day after you interview for a job with his campaign.

Sid Blumenthal traveled such a route, as did Bill Moyers, and similar routes have been pursued by, inter alia, Pat Buchanan and David Frum. There's nothing wrong with making the one-way trip -- leaving journalism to become a political professional -- but hopscotching back-and-forth is just not right, because having a stake in the political game interferes with independent judgment.
I was a bit chagrined a few weeks ago, when the Bob Barr campaign site put me on their "Bloggers for Barr" blogroll. I've done a lot of blogging (and reporting) about Barr's campaign -- I was the first to report on the "Draft Barr" effort that resulted in his LP president candidacy -- but that's different than being an advocate for Barr.

Of course, I'm not anti-Barr. I've known him a long time and have great access to some of his key staff, so covering his campaign has been a lot of fun, because all I have to do is make a couple of quick phone calls in order to scoop the daylights out of most other reporters.

If the Barr campaign were to do something incredibly stupid, however, I'd want the scoop on that story, too, so the "Bloggers for Barr" thing is kind of misleading. Althugh I'm not complaining or asking them to take me off their blogroll, because their Web site throws off a steady traffic of visitors.

If getting traffic from a candidate's blogroll makes me ethically compromised, so be it. We'll take this up at the next Bloggers Ethics Committee meeting. I'm much more objective about Bob Barr, however, than I am about Natalie Portman. (If somebody wants to put me on a "Blogs for Natalie" blogroll, go right ahead.)

Still, in the interests of full disclosure, I have tell you that Wednesday night in New York, Bob promised that if he's elected president, he'll appoint me ambassador to the tropical island paradise of my choice. Of course, Barr's a politician and you can't trust a politician's promises. In fact, if you asked him, he might even deny making any such promise. But he doesn't want to see that ugly headline:

BARR FLIP-FLOPS ON
KEY DIPLOMATIC POST

So he'd better watch his step. I may be ethically compromised, but that doesn't mean I'm not still potentially dangerous . . .

UPDATE: Marc Ambinder, suck-up.