Rules for Presidents (Obama using Alinsky rules against Fox)

Wall St Journal: Best of the Web Today ^ | OCTOBER 23, 2009 | James Taranto

[Behind Liberal Lines]

Blogger Donald Sensing has a fascinating analysis of President Obama's war against Fox News. He describes the effort as "directly out of the Saul Alinsky playbook." Alinsky was the author of "Rules for Radicals," bible of left-wing community organizers. One of his rules, or "power tactics": "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Sensing analyzes how Obama is carrying out this advice....

It's hard to see any way in which the White House's war on Fox makes sense. The aim of the effort seems to be to contain the political damage from stories like the Van Jones and Acorn scandals, which Fox reported well ahead of most media outlets, by encouraging journalists at those outlets to think of Fox as illegitimate.

But that is their natural inclination anyway; it is the reason Fox was out in front on those stories. Other news organizations were embarrassed to be so badly scooped--and rightly so, because it exposed them as, at best, lacking a nose for news and, at worst, being in the tank for the Obama White House. The role of Obama courtier may suit Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow just fine, but for any real journalist, being blessed as "legitimate" by a powerful politician is a challenge to prove one's independence.

Further, it diminishes the president for him to act as media critic. As Obama himself suggested in trying to dodge Savannah Guthrie's question, why isn't he concentrating on the economy, Afghanistan and other matters that are actually part of his job?

[Mamzelle]

That Alinsky rule was for individuals, was it not? It doesn’t work as well on institutions.

[Bobalu]

[workerbee]

Best laugh I’ve had all day!!!

[ohioWfan]

Oh, my.

That's disturbing and hilarious at the same time.

[Red Badger]

Saul Ailinsky’s Rules for Radicals works BOTH WAYS. He didn’t call his book “ Rules for Leftist Radicals Only”................

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

The Obama fake messiah cult is right out of a book on utopian extremist movements.
Charismatic cult leader, delusional promises of utopia, hysterical egalitarianism,
levelling, hypnotic chanting of mindless mantras at mass rallies, demonization of opponents.
It's a textbook case study.
Right down to the Maoist, Alinskyite, and Fabian Socialist sources and footnotes.

[norwaypinesavage]

"For any real journalist, being blessed as "legitimate" by a powerful politician is a challenge to prove one's independence"

By grouping Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich and Bob Herbert in with Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, we already know what the thinks they are; he's only negotiating the price.

[avacado]

Actually Obama is breaking that particular rule. It says to go after individuals and not institutions and that is why it's backfiring.

RULE: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

[ctdonath2]

The Rules only work on those willing to succumb to rhetoric.
Doesn’t work on those who think hardball is just a game.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

Here is the dirty secret: Alinsky’s rules don’t work.
They are just more liberal theory that breaks down in practice.
Oh, you can get away with a few things.
But Abraham Lincoln (attributed) said it best:
“You can fool some of the people all of the time,
and all of the people some of the time,
but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

[fortunecookie]

Well he has to go after the one major news agency that doesn't kowtow and wait to be told what the news is and how to spin it. It detracts from the bungling and plays a kind of class warfare game. I'm surprised he's made the remarks personally and not hid behind the WH, but then, that is an Alinsky rule, make it personal. Wow, I was still surprised.

[fr_freak]

Here is the dirty secret: Alinsky’s rules don’t work. They are just more liberal theory that breaks down in practice.

I disagree. I think the Alinsky rules work just fine on a dumbed-down populace, which we have in spades. Alinsky's main flaw is that he formulated these tactics for a radical Left to use against a peaceful, law-abiding, polite mainstream society. What he failed to foresee was what would happen if BOTH sides started using these tactics. Then what you end up with is endless mudslinging, and the Left, fat, lazy and spoiled from their decades of unanswered Alinsky tactics, naturally ratchets up the rhetoric expecting to reach a point of ugly past which the Right is not willing to go, but they have vastly underestimated the level of anger and not-giving-a-damn on the Right these days. So the rhetoric of the Left goes past the rational limits and well into whackjob territory, serving to reveal their true nature and turning off much of the previously sympathetic electorate.

[submarinerswife]

Very good article!

[Rome2000]

“Frank Marshall Davis works closely in communist causes with Vernon Jarrett in Chicago. Davis moves to hawaii where he eventually meets and mentors a young Barack Obama. Then Obama moves to Chicago where his career is promoted by both Davis’s old colleague Vernon Jarrett and the Communist Party. Vernon Jarrett’s daughter-in-law employs Barack Obama’s fiance, befriends the family and becomes one of President Obama’s most trusted advisors. The Communist Party throws its entire weight behind Obama’s presidential campaign.

Are we expected to believe that this is all mere coincidence?

Would there be an Obama/Jarrett relationship today, if there had been no Frank Marshall Davis/Jarrett connection through the Communist Party of post war Chicago?

What role, if any, has the modern Communist Party USA played in fostering that relationship in more recent times?

The Communist Party USA continues to back their “friend” Barack Obama.

How deeply has the Communist Party been involved in advancing Obama’s political career-through the Jarrett family, or by other means?

The answers to these questions will have major implications for the future of what’s left of the free world.”

[TaxPayer2000]

Obama tries to fight the system. One wonders when it'll dawn on him that he is the system.

[c-five]

This is very funny, actually. Obama says FNC is not a news organization, really, and that the *real* news organizations should not treat it as such.

Who scooped *all* the others on Van Jones, ACORN and the National Endowment for the Arts? Of all the so-called news channels, FOX is the *only* one which delivered.

No doubt Obama is ticked at FOX. It’s actually reporting the news.

Obama is trying to turn the truth on its head. Throw it back at him!