Disdain for the Press

May 29, 2013

Maureen Dowd muses on the relationship between President Obama and the press:

“What is it about Obama that he so disdains us?” he muses. “Presidents always hate leaks. Ronald Reagan said ‘I’ve had it up to my keister with these leaks.’ But they usually don’t act on it. Even if Obama didn’t personally sign off, people always sense by osmosis what leaders are thinking and go in that direction. His people know that leaks offend his sense of discipline and that he likes to protect his right flank by being tough on national security.

“Kennedy had been a reporter, but Obama is not friendly with the press. And he has contempt for people who don’t do their jobs, and, when you talk to the press out of school, you’re not doing your job.”

quoting Jonathan Alter on the relationship between the president and the press.

I don’t think that any of the things that she or Mr. Alter cites has much to do with the relationship between the president and the press. Unlike Presidents Clinton or Reagan, President Obama is not afraid of the press. They need him more than he needs them. He can always make a primetime speech, get network time, and have the pundits and reporters fawn over him afterwards. Or his organization will rally social media to his support, avoiding the old-fashioned media outlets entirely.

2 comments… add one
  • steve Link

    Access has become all important for our press. They do very little real reporting, afraid to offend much of anyone and lose access. I think you are right that he understands that he doesnt really need them very much. (Dowd, OTOH forgets that the GOP wanted a special prosecutor to go after leaks. I think the pressure to go after leakers has been increasing over the years.)

    Steve

  • jan Link

    There seems to be a growing chorus of people citing Obama/Nixon character comparisons. Not long ago it was merely the most strident on the right bringing up the discredited president of the 70’s, when discussing Obama’s foibles. However, now the two men are becoming more like fraternal twins, in the coupling of their political misadventures and responses to them, even from many on the left.

    Today, American historian, Tim Stanley, has penned a cutting analysis of Obama’s travails, placing them squarely in the same company with his predecessor, the 37th president.

    It’s important to remember that Obama’s second term blues began long before the scandals broke. Although he won the 2012 election, the Democrats failed to take the House, and the Senate remained vulnerable to filibuster. That might not have been such a roadblock to legislation had the Prez not spent the election trashing his opponents, calling the Republicans everything from heartless SOBs to enablers of rape. The result was that he entered his second term despised by much of the Congress and so unable to get much done. Yes, he hardballed the GOP into accepting nominal tax increases but he failed even to pass even the slenderest of gun control bills. His political capital was exhausted within weeks.

    Stanley augments his claims even further:

    Even dear old Helen Thomas compared Obama to Nixon. Josh Meyer, a former national security writer for the Los Angeles Times, opined, “There’s a red line that no other administration has crossed before that the Obama administration has blown right past.” It is true that none of the shenanigans have been linked directly to the Oval Office. But while we’ve yet to find the smoking email, there’s a growing consensus that Obama set the tone of his administration by the trademark brutality by which he fought his opponents.

    Yesterday, Obama was once again busy doing what he does best — going to fundraisers. The same was true, while the consulate in Benghazi was still burning, when he went to Las Vegas. Last Wednesday, he was off to Chicago for a pricey get together with his elite supporters. And, ironically, Stanley noted that one of his fondest media standbys even seemed less than impressed:

    He “obviously likes giving speeches more than he does running the executive branch,” observed Chris Matthews, a disenchanted liberal journalist who once said that those speeches sent “a thrill” up his leg.

    As if to fulfill one of Voltaire’s musings —- “To learn who rules over you, find out who you are allowed to criticize” — seems to be a lingering but reluctantly accepted lesson being foisted upon some of the MSM today.

    What the mainstream media has yet to do is to connect the authoritarianism of the administration’s personnel with the authoritarianism of its policies. The two are inseparable. An administration that spies on opponents is also an administration that tries to socialise healthcare, kill US citizens with drone strikes, force churches to compromise their moral consciences, make it harder to purchase firearms and run up unimaginable levels of debt. Obama is the latest in a long line of wannabe emperors to inhabit the Oval Office, and if his presidency resembles Nixon’s then it’s because both share the view that the complexities and dangers of modern life require the executive branch and the federal government to assume levels of authority not implied by the Constitution. The only antidote to this imperialist trend is a president who willingly gives up his power – and you’d struggle to find any politician in either party who would be happy to do that.

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