Alums bring clarity to hazy primary season

Founded in 2000 by Tom Bevan ’91 and John McIntyre ’91, who did not meet until after college, the site compiles political news articles, opinion pieces, analysis, commentary and polls from publications ranging from The New York Times to Rolling Stone magazine.

“The idea was that these pieces should be available to the public all in one place. We had a passion for this, but we also recognized that there would be a demand for a site like this,” McIntyre said.

Bevan and McIntyre came up with the idea for their site in the late 1990s.

“I think the real driving force behind it was just a recognition that ... suddenly you could read what was in The Washington Post or L.A. Times [online], that you didn’t have to have a hard copy of a paper,” McIntyre said.

Campus leaders of political groups from both sides use the site frequently.

“It’s a nice sort of clearing house for all the political info you could ever need, probably more than I would ever want,” College Democrats president Rob Weiss ’09 said.

Andrew Malcolm ’09, president of the College Republicans, agreed.

“RCP is a fantastic site, and [it’s] one of the first things I read every morning to get a sense of what’s happening in politics,” Malcolm said in an e-mail.

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Because it aggregates articles from various sources, the site also has a reputation for being relatively bias-free.

“One of the successes of the site is that it’s a place where people can get opinions from all over the ideological spectrum,” McIntyre said, adding that many sites only give opinions from either a conservative or liberal perspective.

Though politics professor and acting Wilson School Dean Nolan McCarty, a daily reader of RCP, said that the site’s blogs and editorials tend to have a conservative bias, he added that he does not think the site is biased as a whole.

“They’re no worse than the Huffington Post on the left. They’re better because most of the content is not their content,” McCarty explained.

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“I think that RCP does a pretty good job of aggregating information from the different political opinion sources, although it is possible that it does have some bias on the conservative side,” Wyatt Yankus ’09, a College Republican, said.

Both Bevan and McIntyre, however, stressed that the site was moderate and a resource for everyone, regardless of their political affiliations.

“We’re occupying a decent place; we’re in the middle,” Bevan said, explaining that they get lots of complaints from people who think they’re too liberal or conservative.

While McIntyre said that he has always been interested in politics, Bevan got “bitten by the political bug after school,” he explained. Nonetheless, Princeton helped prepare him for RealClearPolitics, he added.

“I learned to follow what you’re most interested in, what you love to do,” Bevan said. “That’s in many ways what I’ve done with RealClearPolitics. It was a bit of a leap of faith to embark on the journey of starting a website,” he added, explaining that the site was founded after the dot-com bubble burst.

It was a risk leaving his career in advertising, Bevan explained. “You just have to trust in yourself, do what you love to do. It’s more of a life lesson than anything else, really.”

McIntyre added that he hopes the site is convenient for current Princeton students, explaining that RCP is a particularly useful tool for young people who tend to be more internet-savvy.

“I think it’s an exciting time to be interested in politics in this country. Young people seem to be more energized about what’s going on in politics and in the country,” McIntyre said, citing the Obama campaign. “RealClearPolitics is a great way for people to stay on top of the debate.”