More and more these briefings have become yet another venue for partisan bickering, which is good if you want clips for cable news but bad if you hope to be informed.
Yet, Bagehot submits, recent briefings against the shadow chancellor from within Mr Miliband's camp suggest a growing impatience with his performance that could sweep those impediments aside.
Amid the flow of rumour, supposition and closed-door briefings it is notable Pietersen has yet to be accused of any specific dereliction of duty by players or management.
Though Mr. Rumsfeld said the office did not yet have a charter, classified briefings circulating in the Pentagon said the office should find ways to "coerce" foreign journalists and opinion makers and "punish" those who convey the wrong message.
Yet in the 19 daily Scott McClellan briefings that followed, the memo was the subject of only 2 out of the approximately 940 questions asked by the White House press corps, according to Eric Boehlert of Salon.
Under the Bush plan, which has been outlined in briefings to reporters and Congressional aides but not yet detailed in budget documents, the Pentagon would build missile test sites on Kodiak Island, off Alaska's southern coast, and at Fort Greely in central Alaska.
The White House, meanwhile, said it would move forward next week with yet another transition activity: daily national security briefings for Mr. Bush.
Reporters lobbed related questions in the White House briefing room, and many covered congressional inquiries into Benghazi, which have already included 13 hearings and 50 briefings on the matter -- none of which has yet produced a "smoking gun" to support allegations of a massive cover-up.
He continued: "Yet it's not the unattributed shadow cabinet briefings around the mess in Falkirk that has convinced me that the arrangement has run its course (though they don't help).
But despite briefings from NASA officials last week, Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Cernan have yet to be convinced that Mr. Obama's plan will succeed.
