Mark Halperin's attempt to "grade" the performances of various Republic 2016 contenders who spoke at CPAC is one of those moments when the veil briefly lifts. He grades each candidate on "substance" and "style," and then presents an "overall" grade that is... not an average of the other two grades. It is clearly completely arbitrary, though his "overall" grades tend to track the "style" grades more than the "substance" grades. In other words, Halperin is outright revealing that, for him, "substance" (whatever he means by that) is simply a quality a politician must perform, not something they must possess, and it is a quality that he deems less important than "style."