Fact-checking the Horse Race

For someone trained in rhetoric, and interested in public deliberation, the media's fascination with fact-checking of candidates, with most of the rest of their attention directed to the horse race, seems incomplete. The facts, surely, are important -- crucial, in fact. But there is also the related area of policy argument, based on facts in part, but also on values, principles, probabilities, prudent judgment. These matters are essential and yet they are harder to get at in sound-bite journalism and sound-bite debates.