Mark Halperin has a feature in Time magazine every week called "The Big Questions."

For a process-obsessed campaign reporter, this means a weekly who's up, who's down scorecard, in an easy to follow Q-&-A format.

This week's questions:

Is Sarah Palin in or out?

What could hold her back?

When does she have to decide?

Part of his answer to question one: "Palin remains more interesting to listen to than any other candidate."  Coming from a guy who once said, "I'm ready to cancel my vacation to go cover Rick Perry," maybe this isn't surprising. It is worth pointing out that Sarah Palin isn't, you know, a candidate for anything.

After praising her "maverick appeal" and "pox-on-both-parties, anti-Establishment message," Halperin notes that "as always, the media can't get enough of her."

Well, he's right about that.

The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza's curious take on the Mark Halperin affair:

The truth of the Halperin matter is that all reporters (or others) who go on television frequently are forever in a “there but for the grace of God go I” situation.... We know of what we speak, having found ourselves tongue-tied or worse on any number of occasions while staring into a camera. And in an ill-fated 2009 video venture known as “Mouthpiece Theater,” The Fix had to live down an inappropriate reference to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

For those who might be unaware, he's referring to the skit where he and Post colleague Dana Milbank likened Hillary Clinton to a "mad bitch." This was a scripted satirical video; the "bitch" reference came in the form of an image, which would suggest they'd thought about it well in advance. There's something utterly predictable-- and pathetic-- about reporters who react to these scandals by suggesting that if you talk into a microphone often enough you're bound to say something stupid.

Time magazine's Mark Halperin called Barack Obama a dick on MSNBC this morning. The video clip is posted all over the web today, and Halperin and MSNBC have both apologized.

Forget about that for a second, and ponder why Halperin said it. The media line on Obama's press conference is that he was unusually feisty, partisan and/or populist. These are qualities the media tend to abhor in Democratic politicians, who are constantly counseled to work with Republicans or stay in the media-defined "center" in order to succeed (and remember that their "center" is often off to the right, politically speaking).

It would seem that Halperin's outburst came in that context-- see this transcript from Mediaite:

Joe Scarborough: Mark Halperin, what was the president’s strategy? We are coming up on a deadline and the president decided to please his base, push back against the Republicans. I guess the question is, we know a deal has to be done. Is this showmanship? A lot of times you go up there and both sides and they act tough so their base will be appeased, then they quietly work the deal behind the scenes.

Mark Halperin: Are we on the seven second delay?

Mika Brzezinski: Lordy.

Halperin: I wanted to characterize how the president behaved.

Scarborough: We have it. We can use it. Go for it. Let’s see what happens.

Brzezinski: We’re behind you, you fall down and we catch you.

Halperin: I thought he was a dick yesterday.

Scarborough: Delay that. delay that. what are you doing? I can’t believe — I was joking. Don’t do that. Did we delay that?

Halperin: I said it. I hope it worked.

The story of Michele Bachmann's surging campaign momentum continues, this time courtesy of Beltway reporter Mark Halperin of Time magazine:

Why has Michele Bachmann suddenly become the It candidate?

With her impressive New Hampshire debate performance, Bachmann has gone from a conservative Sarah Palin-lite curiosity to a potential game changer. For two hours onstage with her GOP rivals, Bachmann appeared polished, serene and in command. Her smooth performance was partly the work of a top-shelf team of veteran advisers (manager Ed Rollins, pollster Ed Goeas, forensic coach Brett O’Donnell). They sanded down some of her rough edges but let Bachmann be Bachmann, complete with zinging anti-Obama applause lines and sunny-side-up conservatism.

Halperin gave some advice on what Bachmann needed to do to keep things going:

Most of all: avoid the kinds of gaffes, misstatements, self-promotional moments and wacky behavior that would cause the media and many traditional Republicans to--once again--write her off.

Huh. Remember that this was a debate where her economic plan boiled down to calling for certain government agencies to be abolished-- especially the Environmental Protection Agency, which she called the "Job Killing Organization of America." That didn't cause the media to write her off--or most voters, either, since they mostly didn't hear about it.

Or when she said:

The Congressional Budget Office has said that Obamacare will kill 800,000 jobs. What could the president be thinking by passing a bill like this, knowing full well it will kill 800,000 jobs?

This is, as you might expect, not true. But maybe it qualifies as "sunny-side-up conservatism."

It's not just Halperin, though. Time columnist Joe Klein writes:

Bachmann is often linked with Palin as a Tea Party pinup, but she is a different breed of cat: She knows her stuff. She actually gives factual, informed answers. She lacks Palin's bitter, solipsistic edge. She skillfully framed even her most extreme responses in an amenable way, smothering her opposition to abortion in cases of rape and incest within a paean to the sanctity of life.

If you scan the debate transcript, Bachmann didn't give many factual answers to any of the questions. (This is probably not all that unusual in a debate.)  When she tried to--see above about the 800,000 lost jobs--her "fact" was totally inaccurate. As has been the pattern in the past with her--like when she claimed on CBS there was a study showing 30 percent of doctors were leaving the field due to the healthcare law. There is no such study. CBS viewers didn't know the truth, and it seems like journalists are unwilling to tell people that Michele Bachmann's not telling the truth.

Time's Mark Halperin (12/27/10) joins his punditry colleagues in cheering Barack Obama's wealthy-friendly tax plan as a great way for the president to end a rough year:

But by ending the year with a bipartisan-compromise tax deal, Obama showed he is capable of delivering the kind of change that was supposed to be the hallmark of his Administration.

Indeed-- I bet a lot of people watching Obama during the 2008 campaign were thinking, "I hope he doesn't mean it when he says he'll get rid of those tax breaks for the wealthy."

More Halperinian analysis:

To avoid seeing the economy stall again, the president needs to demonstrate that he has a strategy for centrist governance when Republicans take control of the House of Representatives in January. Political nihilists on the right and left may find the notion of swallowing something that their opponents want antithetical to their mind-set. But Obama's ability to compromise will prove crucial. Here's a simple rule for him: If a proposal is denounced by both Nancy Pelosi and Sarah Palin, it will probably find support in the center of the electorate.

Here's a simple test for that simple rule: What kinds of policy ideas would result from applying the Palin/Pelosi principle? (Torturing puppies would apparently be a sure-fire electoral winner--since Pelosi and Palin would presumably both denounce this.) Of course, defining the "center" in this way is absurd; repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell is broadly popular, for instance, but it outrages Palinesque Republicans. So it's not centrist, according to the Halperin rule. Unfortunately, a lot of Beltway journalists see the world this way.