|
|
|
Subject:
Obama the teflon Presidency or just more trustworthy?-better golfer for sure
Le Zookeeper
10/27/2009 11:11:17 AM
|
| A four-hour stop in New Orleans, on his way to a $3 million fundraiser.
Snubbing the Dalai Lama.
Signing off on a secret deal with drug makers.
Freezing out a TV network.
Doing more fundraisers than the last president. More golf, too.
President Barack Obama has done all of those things ? and more.
What?s remarkable is what hasn?t happened. These episodes haven?t become metaphors for Obama?s personal and political character ? or consuming controversies that sidetracked the rest of his agenda.
It?s a sign that the media?s echo chamber can be a funny thing, prone to the vagaries of news judgment, and an illustration that, in politics, context is everything.
Conservatives look on with a mix of indignation and amazement and ask: Imagine the fuss if George W. Bush had done these things?
And quickly add, with a hint of jealousy: How does Obama get away with it?
?We have a joke about it. We?re going to start a website: IfBushHadDoneThat.com,? former Bush counselor Ed Gillespie said. ?The watchdogs are curled up around his feet, sleeping soundly. ... There are countless examples: some silly, some serious.?
Indeed, Bush got grief for secret meetings with the oil industry, politicizing the White House and spending too much time on his beloved bike. But it?s not just Republicans who notice. Media observers note that the president often gets kid-glove treatment from the press, fellow Democrats and, particularly, interest groups on the left ? Bush?s loudest critics, Obama?s biggest backers.
But others say there?s a larger phenomenon at work ? in the story line the media wrote about Obama?s presidency. For Bush, the theme was that of a Big Business Republican who rode the family name to the White House, so stories about secret energy meetings and a certain laziness, intellectual and otherwise, fit neatly into the theme, to be replayed over and over again.
Obama?s story line was more positive from the start: historic newcomer coming to shake up Washington. So the negatives that sprung up around Obama ? like a sense that he was more flash than substance ? track what negative coverage he?s received, captured in a recent ?Saturday Night Live? skit that made fun of his lack of accomplishments in office.
?There may well be almost an unconscious effort on the part of the media to give Obama a bit more slack because he is more likable, because he is the first African-American president. That plays into it,? said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst at the University of Southern California.
Democrats find the complaints of Obama ?getting a pass? hard to stomach in light of the way the press treated Bush ? particularly on the single biggest mistake of his presidency, relying on the faulty intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. Now, Obama?s aides say, the positive coverage simply reflects the fact that their efforts are succeeding.
?As our administration makes progress on the agenda that Washington has ignored for too long, we expect we?ll get some news coverage of that progress that we like and some tough coverage that we don?t,? White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. ?It?s not unlike the New Orleans Saints, who are getting lots of good coverage of their perfect record so far ? certainly better coverage than the [2-5] Redskins ? but it doesn?t mean the Saints have liked every story that?s been written about them since training camp. It goes with the territory.?
There are signs the friendly tone toward Obama is ebbing. Case in point: a front-page story in The New York Times noting that Obama?s all-male basketball games drew fire from the head of the National Organization for Women, who called the games ?troubling.?
But here are other stories in which Obama seems to have gotten a pass:
New Orleans
As a candidate, Obama railed against the Bush administration for abandoning and then neglecting the people of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. He made five campaign trips to the city.
But as president, Obama waited almost nine months before visiting the Big Easy, spent less than four hours on the ground there and then jetted to San Francisco for a $3 million Democratic fundraiser.
?Don?t judge anybody on the amount of time that they?ve spent there. Judge only what this administration promised that they would do, what they?ve done every day and what they?re continuing to work on,? press secretary Robert Gibbs said, pointing to positive reviews of the federal government?s efforts under Obama.
For their part, Democrats can?t see how Bush officials can muster much umbrage over anything related to New Orleans, given how the Republican administration handled the initial response to Katrina.
Managing the press
When the Obama administration moved in recent weeks to isolate and disparage Fox News as a wing of the Republican Party, there were few immediate howls of outrage ? even from Fox?s fellow journalists in the media.
Press de |
| |
|
|
|
