Obama Creates A Mainstream Press Problem For Himself
August 20, 2012 11 Comments
Newsweek’s cover story this week is “Why Barack Obama Needs To Go.” The cover story is written by Niall Ferguson, a former adviser to the McCain campaign. In other words, the Newsweek cover story isn’t actually news, it’s commentary. Newsweek almost always leans to the left, so a piece of right-wing commentary appearing on the front cover is surprising. But that Newsweek places commentary on the cover rather than news perhaps in part explains the downfall of weekly news magazines. In any event, what this piece of right-wing commentary on the front cover represents is the mainstream press warning Obama about ignoring them.
Ferguson does a terrific job laying out the case against Barack Obama’s re-election. From the fact that 110 million people received welfare last year to the fact that only 50% paid income or capital gains taxes last year to the disaster of Federal debt and Obamacare Ferguson makes a strong case. At the center of that case, indeed at the center of any case against Obama, is the complete lack of experience Obama had when he entered the White House. Obama has never offered a vision to the public. He may have a vision for what he wants but he has no idea how to get there.
The real story here though is that a left-wing, mainstream publication is willing to put this sort of story on the cover. The press has grown increasingly tired of Obama mistreating them. He hasn’t taken a mainstream press reporter’s question in two months. He hasn’t held a press conference in the US since last June when he declared the private sector was doing fine. The last time he took questions was at the G20 conference in Mexico when he filibustered three questions and made absolutely no sense in his answers. One might be able to understand why he avoids the press, he makes a major gaffe ever time he talks to them.
Where the Obama campaign really goes wrong though is in its defense of interviews given to People and Entertainment Tonight. They declared those “news” outlets to be equal to the mainstream press, at least in terms of importance. The mainstream press apparently feels dissed by all of this, according to Jake Tapper. So it should surprise no one that mainstream press organizations like Newsweek are more willing to attack Obama. If he won’t speak to the mainstream press and if he pretends like entertainment news outlets are equally as important, why should the mainstream media continue to fawn over the President?
Where the Obama campaign goes wrong is in declaring the entertainment news outlets of equal importance to the White House press. It simply isn’t true and in the process Obama’s surrogates are insulting their own voters. Entertainment news isn’t equal to the White House press, local media however is. Even in that Obama manages to look distant, even with the most friendly radio host. One host in Iowa wanted restaurant suggestions for Chicago. Obama sounded like he had never been to Chicago before and offered only the most cliché restaurants. While amusing, that sort of press is important because it can be targeted.
Obama has a press problem right now. It isn’t fatal, the mainstream media is still left-wing and they’ll continue to repeat his press releases. But they’re annoyed, to the point that Newsweek has a cover story commentary arguing for Obama’s replacement as President. They’re annoyed to the point of grumbling about lack of interviews. The Obama campaign has only made matters worse, which ensures for the time being slightly less favorable treatment. The solution is to either hold a press conference or give an interview to one or two of these people. But Obama cannot afford to do that, he always seems to make a mistake that gives Romney traction. He’s in a rough place with a formerly adoring media.
About Steven
It’s actually kind of funny. Barack Obama is in an unfamiliar place in this election. Nothing is going as it was planned and he may not know where he needs to go, or how he needs to proceed. Therefore, he falls back to his old standard, attack opponent into submission, by any means necessary. With the addition of Paul Ryan to the Romney ticket, that isn’t even working as he thought it would.
Obama’s inability to lead and manage is painfully obvious in how his campaign is being run.
I think Obama may be suffering from a mental disorder. Seems to move from manic bulletproof behavior to depression phases avoiding the press, bi-polar? He cannot accept blame, always points to Bush. I’d bet he freaks out when he sees an insect. Likely blames Bush for the roaches Moochelle brought to the White House. Bi-Polar?
I wouldn’t go quite that far. He does seem to have problem accepting blame, though he’s quick to blame others. That he avoids the press isn’t a sign of mental illness, all modern Presidents avoid the press for long periods. I would say he’s on the narcissistic side, which isn’t a mental disorder but rather a sin problem.
Cause I know you like to carefully consider both sides before you come to a conclusion: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/a-full-fact-check-of-niall-fergusons-very-bad-argument-against-obama/261306/
There has been some fun back-and-forth about Niall’s completely dishonest presentation of the CBO’s deficit conclusions in particular (I won’t ask you to read the initial Krugman piece to which the dailybeast link is a response, but it is good).
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/20/newsweek-cover-rebuttal-paul-krugman-is-wrong.html
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/08/niall-fergusons-ridiculous-misleading-defense-132551.html
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/08/more-lies-from-niall-ferguson.html
I read the Daily Beast response to Krugman late yesterday. Look, I said in my post that Furguson wrote political commentary not news. I happen to believe Furguson is more right than not. It’s hard to look past the 8.3% unemployment rate, the weak recovery, the $5 trillion in new debt and the lack of vision for a second term. Not surprisingly the left disagrees. What a shock!
I guess we can add that to the long list of differences between us: I like even my so-called “political commentary” to be evidence-based, factually correct and free of obvious lies. I’m going to hazard a guess that you’ve not read anything other than Niall’s response, but you really should and think deeply about it, even if it makes you uncomfortable.
We can go back to the well on the economic situation if you want: the fact that essentially every economist out there agrees that we are better off because of the stimulus; the fact that many economists were arguing from the beginning that it was too small and misallocated; the fact that you can blame essentially all of the debt increase on policies Obama did not put in place (1. Bush era tax cuts, 2. unfunded wars and 3. automatic responses to the recession); that conservatives standing athwart history saying ‘stop’ have hamstrung Obama from actually implementing any vision at all.
I’ve asked you before to tell me exactly what policies Obama has enacted that have driven the debt/deficit you blame on him (with evidence) and received the usual evidence-free “he is a tax-and-spend liberal destroying the world blah blah blah” faith-based response, but if you have anything now/new, I’d love to read it.
I don’t doubt that Keynesian economists believe that the Stimulus worked and if they don’t think it worked it’s because they believe it wasn’t big enough. The idea that Keynesian economists comprise of “nearly every” economist is absurd. The fact though is that the Stimulus didn’t work and it was never going to. The Stimulus consisted of three parts. Miniscule tax cuts, which like Bush’s refund in 2007 didn’t work. Block grants to states, which the states largely used to pay off pre-existing debt. The third was not shovel ready jobs. These not shovel ready jobs were largely already planned. So no, the Stimulus didn’t work.
What policies have increased the debt? Let’s start with Obamacare and the legion of bureaucrats hired by the Feds. In 2008 the Federal government spent $2.9 trillion. In 2012 the Feds are spending $3.7 trillion. So we’re spending $800 billion more under Obama this year than we did in Bush’s last year. Obamacare is part of the problem. We can look at the massive auto bailout, entitlements Obama refuses to reform, expansion of entitlements like Obama’s recent unilateral welfare reform repeal etc.
If you don’t want to blame Obama, let’s blame Democrats. In 2006 Federal spending was $2.7 trillion. In the four years the Democrats controlled Congress Federal spending skyrocketed to $3.7 trillion.
“The idea that Keynesian economists comprise of “nearly every” economist is absurd.” I didn’t say that “nearly every” economist is Keynesian – I said nearly every economist agreed that we are better off.
http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-results?SurveyID=SV_cw5O9LNJL1oz4Xi
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=6125273&page=1#.UDfshERj26U
It didn’t pay off debt – they kept employees on the payroll that would have otherwise been laid off. Most states have a balanced budget amendment that prevents debt accumulation.
The CBO says Obamacare is a net deficit reducer. Why would any other source be less reliable? “…CBO and JCT estimate that H.R. 6079 (repeal) would reduce direct spending by $890 billion and reduce revenues by $1 trillion over the 2013–2022 period, thus adding $109 billion to federal budget deficits over that period (see Table 2).” This is not a significant driver and in fact helps.
Re: the auto bailout, per CBO reports and factcheck.org roughly half of the original $80B invested (not spend, invested) has been returned. Stipulate that the remainder goes away and that represents about 1% of the budget. This is also not a significant driver.
What expansion of entitlements are you talking about? Give us specifics!
I’ll stipulate that we are spending more. What specific Obama-enacted-backed-whatever policy is responsible? How much of the increase in spending is directly attributable to Obama/Democrat policies? I’m telling you, there is no ‘there’ there.
By suggesting that nearly every economist agrees you’ve dismissed all the conservative economists who vehemently disagree.
The auto bailout cost taxpayers $25 billion according to the CBO. It would have been cheaper to pay all the union employees one year of salary plus pay for education to learn a new skill than it cost us to bailout GM and Chrysler. Both of those companies are beginning to falter again, they’re losing market share and their stock price is dropping. The bailout didn’t save those companies, it only saved the unions.
Obamacare only breaks even if you include all the Medicare cuts ($700 billion) and if you dream. Otherwise, it’s a trillion dollar boondoogle that is unlikely to save anyone anything but will cost taxpayers dearly in added taxes.
Let’s see what 0bama has lined himself up with: a bumbling Boobyhead Gibbs for his 1st Press secretary, replaced by Jay the barking “carni”, 2 dopes – a gal – and a reelection circus, and a Gaffe Chicken VP who keeps on giving to the GOP whenever he clucks another insult. Oh, and there’s a Ghoulsbee spooking around the administration.