In the comments to Saturday’s post on my skepticism that Roland Burris’s ethical issues will injure President Obama, commenter Drew remarked:
We who live in Illinois might know of all the shady dealings and characters in the IL political soup from which Obama was spawned. But does the broader national public know of a thug like Emil Jones? During the campaign all was quickly whisked away, or not covered at all.
to which commenter Icepick rejoined:
he public doesn’t care, Drew. Obama was giving a standing O in NY over the weekend for eating diner. (Presumably he chewed with his mouth closed.) The public has decided that it wants a God in human guise as its ruler, and nothing else matters. And the press is happy because (a) this God believes in exactly the same form of public looting that they believe in, and (b) it makes for easy copy.
My commenters and I aren’t the only ones frustrated by the current state of affairs. I his most recent column Robert Samuelson complains:
Obama has inspired a collective fawning. What started in the campaign (the chief victim was Hillary Clinton, not John McCain) has continued, as a study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism shows. It concludes: “President Barack Obama has enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush during their first months in the White House.”
The study examined 1,261 stories by The Post, the New York Times, ABC, CBS and NBC, Newsweek magazine and the “NewsHour” on PBS. Favorable articles (42 percent) were double the unfavorable (20 percent), while the rest were “neutral” or “mixed.” Obama’s treatment contrasts sharply with coverage in the first two months of the Bush (22 percent of stories favorable) and Clinton (27 percent) presidencies.
Unlike George Bush and Bill Clinton, Obama received favorable coverage in both news columns and opinion pages. The nature of stories also changed. “Roughly twice as much of the coverage of Obama (44 percent) has concerned his personal and leadership qualities than was the case for Bush (22 percent) or Clinton (26 percent),” the report said. “Less of the coverage, meanwhile, has focused on his policy agenda.” Obama has inspired a collective fawning. What started in the campaign (the chief victim was Hillary Clinton, not John McCain) has continued, as a study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism shows. It concludes: “President Barack Obama has enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush during their first months in the White House.”
The study examined 1,261 stories by The Post, the New York Times, ABC, CBS and NBC, Newsweek magazine and the “NewsHour” on PBS. Favorable articles (42 percent) were double the unfavorable (20 percent), while the rest were “neutral” or “mixed.” Obama’s treatment contrasts sharply with coverage in the first two months of the Bush (22 percent of stories favorable) and Clinton (27 percent) presidencies.
Unlike George Bush and Bill Clinton, Obama received favorable coverage in both news columns and opinion pages. The nature of stories also changed. “Roughly twice as much of the coverage of Obama (44 percent) has concerned his personal and leadership qualities than was the case for Bush (22 percent) or Clinton (26 percent),” the report said. “Less of the coverage, meanwhile, has focused on his policy agenda.”
I think that Icepick is right. Members of the press materially support the direction in which President Obama is taking the country or, more accurately, the direction in which they believe he’s taking the country since there’s a certain amount of disjunction between President Obama’s words and his actions.
I don’t entirely blame the president for the distance between what he’s said and what he’s done. I suspect that things look quite a bit different when you’re in the Oval Office looking out rather than standing outside the Oval Office looking in. And it is simply incontrovertible that President Obama came into office with the slimmest body of experience of any president of recent memory. To some degree I believe he’s adapting what he does to suit the circumstances as they actually are rather than as he thought they were.
Nonetheless I do believe that Barack Obama has some closely held convictions. For example, I think he sincerely believes in equality as a primary objective. I think that’s a will o’ the wisp and that such equality as can be realized occurs by pursuing liberty as an objective. These days the greatest threat to liberty is big institutions including Big Business, Big Labor, and Big Government, most of whom have become large via special pleading.
“For example, I think he sincerely believes in equality as a primary objective. I think that’s a will o’ the wisp and that such equality as can be realized occurs by pursuing liberty as an objective. These days the greatest threat to liberty is big institutions including Big Business, Big Labor, and Big Government, most of whom have become large via special pleading.”
If I might be so bold:
For example, I think he sincerely believes in equality of outcome, as opposed to opportunity, as a primary objective. Equality of opportunity can only be realized by individuals enjoying liberty pursuing their objectives within the context of the law. These days the greatest threat to liberty is big institutions including Big Business, Big Labor, and Big Government, most of whom have become large through the distortive mechanism of Big Government regulation, activist courts and false campaign promises. His pursuit of equality of outcome will only make this problem worse.
I agree and that’s a valuable distinction. I think that pursuing equality of outcome has (at least) two problems: moral hazard and deadweight loss. If people become used to the notion that their needs will be met regardless of what they do, a lot of people probably won’t do much. And deadweight loss insures a perpetually decreasing pie to divvy up equally.
I’m an outsider to Illinois politics. I never heard anything unless it is a big scandal. Pretty much everything I know comes from reading this site.
Emil Jones is the now retired President of the Illinois Senate. Barack Obama has frequently hailed him as his political mentor. Emil Jones put Barack Obama on the map. He is also believed to be one of the politicians caught on tape with Gov. Blagojevich (at least he was). Whether that’s the case or not he was Blagojevich’s primary ally in Illinois government.
That’s way beyond guilt by association. It’s more like a chain of evidence.
Andy –
Dave is being diplomatic. The “axis of evil” between Chicago and Springfield (our state capitol) involves a long list of rogues and scoundrels. You may have gotten a taste of it with the Blago and Burris situation, but this is just the tip……and its been going on for years. Half of the Chicago city counsel should be in jail…….the other half on probation. And so it goes. It rivals the Boston mess when the Bulger brothers were in power.
From this soup arose Mr. Obama. Those who think he is not one and of that soup……well, I don’t know what to say.
I’m not Polly Pure Bread, politics is a contact sport. But we have an almost uniquely corrupt system here. (Apologies to Detroit. You are pros, too.) Don’t ever mistake that Obama smile for anything other than the smiling cobra……
I think the press personally likes him as a cosmopolitan. Sorry, Bill and Jimmy, you’re red necks. That puts it beyond politics and at least for the press, Obama is a charismatic leader.
I think the press personally likes him as a cosmopolitan. Sorry, Bill and Jimmy, you’re red necks. That puts it beyond politics and at least for the press, Obama is a charismatic leader.
Bill had another problem: He was clearly smarter than anyone he was dealing with in the Press. The Press has a very highly inflated view of their own abilities. I heard a SPORTS reporter recently express shock that chemists scored significantly higher on the Wunderlich test than reporters. Instead of scoring many points lower than chemists (on average) he thought reporters should have scored several points HIGHER than chemists. In conotext, he thought reporters should have had 20 more IQ points on average than the tests indicate. He wasn’t kidding.
I didn’t and don’t like Bill Clinton, but the man has a powerful mind, much more powerful than either his two predecessors or the two who have followed him. Bill must have made reporters feel like total idiots when dealing with them, and no one likes that.