Toward the end of the last presidential campaign, I heard an amusing report on one of the cable news networks about the candidates’ determination to get out their “talking points” in all of their interviews, regardless of what question they were asked. They had obviously decided, in their closed-door strategy sessions with their inner circle of campaign strategists, that they needed to try to bring all interviews back to the topics that were most favorable to them, and to hit a few key points on those topics whenever they had an opportunity to do so.

Both candidates seemed to be doing this, rather consistently — that was the point of the report. What was funny was hearing them do it as tapes of their recent interviews were played. First, we’d hear the question that a reporter had asked. T…