danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

I am sensing an intriguing paradox in the media’s coverage of this presidential campaign.  The press is covering Barack Obama more than John McCain from what I have observed.  Granted, Senator Obama’s Middle East and Europe tour were remarkably photogenic, and Senator McCain’s campaign stops in grocery store aisles are far less visually compelling.

But John McCain should count himself lucky, for though Barack Obama’s face is oftener on our television screens, that ubiquity comes with a degree of scrutiny that Senator McCain does not face himself.  This morning, as I was watching Meet the Press, where Tom Brokaw was interviewing Senator Obama, I heard Brokaw ask the same question every talking head on TV is asking, namely, “why won’t you admit you were wrong about the troop surge in Iraq?”  Frank Rick mentions the same phenomenon in his column in today’s New York Times:

The growing Obama clout derives not from national polls, where his lead is modest. Nor is it a gift from the press, which still gives free passes to its old bus mate John McCain. It was laughable to watch journalists stamp their feet last week to try to push Mr. Obama into saying he was “wrong” about the surge. More than five years and 4,100 American fatalities later, they’re still not demanding that Mr. McCain admit he was wrong when he assured us that our adventure in Iraq would be fast, produce little American “bloodletting” and “be paid for by the Iraqis”.

First, Barack Obama has remarked that the surge was more effective than he anticipated.  But Senator Obama also, rightly, points out that there were factors beyond mere troop levels that have contributed to stability in Iraq.  That is the correct answer, but the press doesn’t like it because it doesn’t give them a “gotcha”.  I just watched Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation ask Jack Reed about the surge.  Senator Reed said that factors like a more active Iraqi political enterprise deserved some of the credit, as did Iraqi Sunnis, and Schieffer replied “why doesn’t Senator Obama just say that?”  Obama has been saying those words almost verbatim.  After almost eight years of a Bush presidency, where almost no mistake–and everyone knows there were many, many major mistakes–could be admitted, and where the media was complicit in many of Bush’s most disastrous policies, the press is eager to seem tough again. In the years between September 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina, President Bush could have raped a baby and not been harshly criticized by the mainstream media (I say “mainstream” because, of course, there were left-wing blogs and writers who were fiercely anti-Bush, but they were relegated to the fringes of the public consciousness, away from national network news broadcasts).  Journalists have come out and admitted recently that they were under considerable editorial pressure from their corporate parents to give Bush a pass.  Even Scott McClellan says the media didn’t ask enough questions when he told them bald-faced lies.  The mainstream media fears being called “liberal” more than anything else, so, as this campaign enters its post-convention phase, watch as the press dogs Obama on every issue, no matter how trivial, and searches desperately for a chink in his armor.

I can already sense that the next buzzword the media will beat to death is “risk”.  Tom Brokaw asked Senator Obama this morning what he thought about a recent poll that suggests more Americans feel Obama is the riskier choice.  So, Obama is “risky”, but President Bush’s policies didn’t jeopardize this nation’s security, credibility, and economic well-being?  I also predict that Senator Obama will also be labeled “arrogant” – both by some who simply wouldn’t publicly use the word they really mean, “uppity”, and by those who had no problems with George W. Bush’s disgustingly arrogant swagger.

Filed under: Current Events, Politics on July 27th, 2008