Yesterday’s so-called “Beer Summit” did not feature: screaming matches; fist fights; heartfelt hugs; apologies. Thus, cable pundits deemed the thing to be a huge disappointment. “I’m pretty unimpressed, Wendell,” Fox’s Bret Baier declared to the network’s White House correspondent, Wendell Goler.
This is unsurprising. “Even through beer goggles,” Lloyd Grove writes, “the reality could never have matched the buildup—which was stoked earlier in the day by a presidential photo-op during which Barack Obama affected to be ‘fascinated with the fascination about this evening.’”
Megan Garber is an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. She was formerly a CJR staff writer.