“Successful brand identities in the House and on talk radio have never before relied on such similar skill sets — there has never been so much politics in media, and media in politics”

Successful brand identities in the House and on talk radio have never before relied on such similar skill sets — there has never been so much politics in media, and media in politics. It is only natural that the melding would become so complete that practitioners would simply jump from one world to the other. “There is going to be more of this happening,” says Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and Republican presidential candidate who hosts a cable show on Fox News and a radio program for Cumulus. He sees political media following a continuum similar to that of pro-football coverage, in which former N.F.L. players and coaches, like Michael Strahan and Jon Gruden, or Terry Bradshaw and John Madden before them, cycle straight into broadcasting. “In politics, there are three basic categories,” Huckabee says. “There’s campaigning, there’s governing and there’s talking about it. The easiest of the three is talking about it. It also pays the best.”

Mark Leibovich, “Radio Killed the Political Star”, The New York Times Magazine (11 May 2014), 17.