Ed Morrissey, as he often can, gets it just right:
Hmmm. It appears that the local [Chicago] press has managed to do what the national media could not — treat Obama as a politician and not a secular messiah. They asked tough questions about Obama’s political connections to a fixer and his campaign’s outright false answers on an Obama adviser’s contacts with Canadian diplomats regarding Obama’s rhetoric on NAFTA. Instead of handling the questions calmly and patiently, Obama accused the media of having an agenda against him, and then angrily stalked off.
Compare this to the press conference John McCain held after the New York Times smeared him by accusing him of having a sexual affair with a lobbyist. Not only did McCain — whose temper has its own zip code, according to some Capitol Hill staffers — give a lengthy and reserved statement, but then stood at the podium until the reporters ran out of questions. In fact, at the end, McCain had to ask twice whether anyone had anything else to ask him before leaving the podium.
By my count, McCain answered 36 questions in this press conference. How many did Obama take before walking off in a huff?
In many ways the media, by not treating him like every other candidate running for the Presidency, has not done Obama any favors. If they had spent more time asking him tough political questions instead of fawning all over him, Obama may have been better prepared to deal with these big moments. Instead, he has had a horrible 48 hours than can only be wiped away with convincing victories tomorrow.
The truth is there is nothing in this video clip that seems even vaguely Presidential.
2 comments:
I think that's an excellent observation, and it's applicable more broadly to liberalism, as a whole. Liberalism and its underlying assumptions are so held by so many in the MSM (and academia), that it rarely gets challenged. As a result, it's lost whatever intellectual heft it once had and lacks rigor, whereas conservatism and its ideas, under constant assault, are much more sound intellectually. Unfortunately, liberalism essentially won the argument in the 1930s about the role of government as the benevolent provider and activist. I might be overstating this case about the intellectual bankruptcy of liberalism, but I don't think I am. They always seem to be talking about how government must respond to whatever the problem at hand is, and never whether the government should act.
Well...I think both liberals and conservatives are susceptible to a bit of group think, where the premises and assumptions go completely unchallenged for so long no one knows WHY they were adopted in the first place. I remember going to dinner at an older university professor's house where the host was an old school liberal, and he was complaining about today's college age liberals. "They don't even know WHY they should support a progressive income tax!" The overarching claim, I think, was that their liberalism wasn't any thing they adopted through arguments and questioning, but it was instead something bequeathed to them.
For candidates it SHOULD be different, if only because they should be challenged by the press, and should make the details of their thinking known to all potential voters. Up until 4 or 5 days ago Obama could be sure to be softballed by the former, and Obamania took care of the need for the latter.
Obama's whining on his plane about having to deal with 3 or 4 issues EVERY DAY was also less than inspiring. How much stuff does he thinks crosses the desk of a President on any given day?
Post a Comment