Posted on 01/05/2013 4:34:57 PM PST by Kaslin
President Obama never disappoints. When the monthly unemployment rate fails to drop, forget it. What’s important is the number of jobs created. But when the rate actually does drop, forget the growth (or lack of it) in jobs. It’s the rate that matters. And don’t blame Obama for the persistence of slow economic growth and high joblessness. That’s the “new normal.” As for the millions of dropouts from the job market, that’s no big deal, hardly worth more than a passing mention.
Full credit is due Obama for his role in the overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. He was cleverly “leading from behind.” But the killing of the American ambassador to Libya and three others in Benghazi—the president bears no responsibility for that. Perish the thought.
Meanwhile, in the months before his reelection in November, Obama doled out government favors to Democratic interest groups like unions, Hispanics, teachers, and single women. This may have looked like shameless exploitation of his high office, but it really was unusually skillful politicking by a master of the game.
My drift here ought to be obvious. I’m referring to the way the media treat Obama. It’s not always adoring. It’s intermittently fair and even-handed. But overall, what’s distinctive about the press coverage of Obama is the absence of fault-finding, criticism, and dogged questioning. And when Obama makes excuses, as he often does, the media tend to echo them.
No president in my lifetime has been covered so favorably and so gingerly. Never has the press corps been so unwilling to pursue stories that might cast the president in an unflattering light. As a group, the media pride themselves on taking an adversarial approach to politicians and government officials. But in Obama’s case, the press acts like a helpmate.
Along with that, the media seem fearful of offending Obama. This is a new phenomenon in presidential coverage. To my recollection, Obama is the first president to instill coverage anxiety, conscious or unconscious.
Compare Obama’s coverage with that of President George W. Bush. The difference is startling. There was no fear of affronting Bush. He faced relentless scrutiny of his tactics in the war on terror: wiretaps, renditions, Guantánamo, the Patriot Act. The media raised questions about his motives, the constitutionality of his policies, and his brainpower. White House press conferences became tense and hostile events when national security issues were broached.
Obama’s adoption of these same policies has drawn minimal attention, much less the kind of media wrath that Bush endured. Last week, for example, Obama signed a bill extending the use of warrentless wiretapping to gather intelligence on America’s enemies. Bush was harshly criticized by the media on this very issue. Obama got a pass.
Bush was also hassled for so-called signing statements citing provisions of a bill he might not enforce. Charlie Savage, then of the Boston Globe, won a Pulitzer Prize for “his revelations” about Bush’s practice. And, not surprisingly, Obama promised not to do signing statements. Yet he has continued the practice, eliciting some coverage, but none of the outrage that was directed at Bush.
In his efforts to combat terrorism, Bush was accused of exceeding presidential authority. But Obama has made recess appointments when the Senate wasn’t in recess and rewritten parts of immigration and welfare law by executive order, clearly stretching his authority beyond constitutional limits. The press praised the immigration change and winked at the others.
It doesn’t take much imagination to come up with actions that would have aroused the press if committed by Bush, but didn’t with Obama. The list is long. Both the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal and the Benghazi killings would have led to months of stories, investigative reports, and outraged commentary. But the media proved to be largely incurious in Obama’s case.
Hurricane Sandy created damage in the billions in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut. The role of Obama and his administration in handling the emergency was scarcely addressed. It’s doubtful Bush would have been let off so easily. He certainly wasn’t in 2005 after Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast.
What if Bush had claimed in speech after speech that Democrats who opposed his policies were putting “party before country”? The media response to an insinuation that Democrats were unpatriotic would have been along the lines of, “How dare the president make such a dastardly claim!” But repeated mentions of “party before country” by Obama have been treated as perfectly acceptable.
And what if Bush had insisted on selective enforcement of federal immigration law and refused to defend in court the Defense of Marriage Act, signed into law by President Clinton? Or if the Bush White House had leaked highly classified national security intelligence to make the president look good? The press would have been in high dudgeon and rightly so. But Obama, guilty on both counts, received media immunity.
Broken promises are the least of Obama’s shortcomings. But the press corps loves to zing presidents for reneging on campaign vows. Obama, as I recall, promised a press conference a month, an immigration bill his first year in office, regular meetings with leaders of both parties in Congress, and unprecedented transparency throughout his administration. He kept none of them, prompting media near-silence.
Might the treatment of Obama harden in his second term? I’m moderately hopeful. I suspect a few in the media are privately embarrassed by the oh-so-soft coverage and would like to apply some accountability to the Obama presidency. If they do, they’ll discover Obama disappoints like other presidents and perhaps more often.
The clowns in the “media” these days would never chance criticizing the Kenyan. It would just break their hearts to be called a “rasis” even one time.
No.
The media has built the criticizing of a black man into such a gigantic proportion, that they actually fear, honestly fear criticizing him.
They are holding back for whomever the next presidentvwill be. They are hoping for a Republican so they can finally unleash the hounds and not have to hold back.
Imagine if Bush had taken even a third of the vacations that Obama and his family have taken?
Imagine if Bush had golfed 1/10th of the amount that Obama has?
Imagine if Bush had as few female or minority staff members as Obama has?
Imagine if Bush had said in his own words while reading a biography, “We made the Mexican maid cry”....
yeah, the press is pathetic and is bias even against their own best interest and well being. If they were fair and balanced, their ratings would be a lot better and their own job security would be better.
The mainstream media and Obama are working towards the same goals, why would they attack their leader?
Did Pravda ever criticize Stalin?
Laughed so hard I almost threw up on my keyboard. The Press pressing Obamalamadingdong?
Correct. Plus he worked on his vacations. That arrogant lazy pos occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave doesn't know the meaning of work
“Did Pravda ever criticize Stalin?”
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The perfect reply.
The Commies have know that education and media are the golden keys to taking America. Brainwash the adults via the media, and the kids through the “pubic” schools and universities.
no, except to say he is not leftist enough
Yes, when Michelle Obama challenges Hillary Clinton for the White House in 2016.
At the Dem convention, candidate Obama promised that he'd pursue "the kind of bold, persistent experimentation that Franklin Roosevelt pursued during the only crisis worse than this one."
This is indicative of the sinister Obamatons' intention to revisit the Depression---and rejigger what came to be known as FDR's New Deal.
SOUND FAMILIAR? In 1939, ten years after Wall Street crashed, FDR's Secy of the Treasury Morgenthau told the House Ways and Means Committee: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong…somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises….....I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started….....And an enormous debt to boot!”.
Obama is no historian but he knows a plan when he sees it.
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As TADSLOS indightfully posted: The New Deal was an abysmal failure, then a global war broke out in large part by our enemies perception of our weakness. That conflict ultimately changed everything economically. We reduced our enemies to rubble, then turned our war building industry into the greatest giant global economic engine the world has ever known to help them re-build and compete against us. Enter the libs in power again in the 60s - 70s, 90s and now the leftist bomb throwers run the country. We haven't had a decisive military or economic victory to go with it since.
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Obama wants to re-live the New Deal? Have at it. We can sort through the rubble and re-build.----we can and will survive anything he flings at us.
The thing that must keep us on high alert: the WH tyrant is obviously planning to have 3-4 terms-----as FDR did.....
......under the guise of continuing his (gag) "great work."
And maybe "pack" the Supreme Court as FRD did.
We don’t have a real press. Sadly, what we do have is a lazy, greedy pack of ideologues who like their cushy lives. Do they care about the little guy? Not at all. They take the money and perks. All the while, they know that Obama is a total fraud and don’t care. Our press thinks it is okay to crush the people at the bottom, so that the people at the top can implement their political agenda.
How ridiculous to even suggest that
I think that Hillary’s health problems will put her in the ground before 2016.
intermittently fair and even-handed?? Huh?? Now I know why I continue to hold Barnes in contempt. He is another panty-wearing weak pathetic man.
Hey Fred, in four years you could probably count on one hand the number of tough questions asked of the one.
The evil MSM is still protecting Obama 100%.
He sure is working his way to the left
That’s really ironic that Barnes could even utter those words, it was he and the rest of Washinton elitist who never got behind a Conservative.
Now the are simpering little toads bemoaning the results.
Imagine if Bush had taken even a third of the vacations that Obama and his family have taken?
Correct. Plus he worked on his vacations. That arrogant lazy pos occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave doesn’t know the meaning of work
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But he is just a window-dressing puppet. Why would he work?
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