To the growing list of mainstream journalists skeptical about Barack Obama’s Excellent Adventure, add my fellow transplanted Pittsburgher and Time columnist Howard Fineman. In a column published on New Year’s Eve, Fineman wonders aloud if Obama bit off more than he could chew in his first year as president.
The column opens with an acknowledgment of several of the weightier items on Obama’s rather overstuffed plate: the ongoing — and, in the view of some economists, worsening — recession and the problem of incipient terrorism in Yemen, exacerbating the already explosive situation in Iraq and Afghanistan.
All of which brings Fineman to ask:
Given the urgency of those challenges, underscored by the Nigerian bomber, was it wise for the president to spend most of his first year and political capital on a monumentally complicated overhaul of the nation’s health-care system? And will the results of that gamble — not fundamental reform, but rather an expensive set of patches, bypasses, and trusses bolted onto the existing system — improve the lives of Americans enough to help him or his fellow Democrats politically?
Fineman’s answer: “Put me down as skeptical.” My reaction to his reaction: What took you so long?
And why, after running interference for Obama throughout the campaign and his entire first year in office, own up to this point of view at all? It seems to me that the mainstream media as a whole — Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the three major TV networks — made a joint, informed decision at the outset of the 2008 election to bet the farm on a dubious candidate. They had to understand the risk of the historical decision not to vet a man with more skeletons rattling around in his closet than Jason Vorhees in the Friday the 13th movies.
So why relent now? Why are Fineman and MoDo and Bob Herbert and their ilk beginning to walk back their earlier boosterism for the leadership of a man whose radical leanings were obvious to anyone willing to look?
One possible explanation, I suppose, is self-preservation. Two of the above-noted media, the Washington Post and Newsweek, which are jointly owned by the Washington Post Company, have been taking on water since late 2008, when the company’s credit rating was downgraded. The Times has had massive layoffs as well and its future is uncertain.
Admittedly, some of the financial woes these organizations are experiencing are unrelated to their fawning coverage of Barack Obama. Certainly, the fate of the mainstream media was sealed to some degree years ago by the rise of the blogosphere. Nevertheless, the question remains: Why become the voice of skepticism now, especially when Obama’s signature reform legislation is on the verge of becoming a reality? Why describe ObamaCare in candid language for the first time, as Fineman does, as “a 10-year, trillion-dollar contraption full of political risk and unintended consequences for a health-care system that constitutes one sixth of the economy”?
Are we witnessing the proverbial drowning man attempting to cut a deal with his maker? I don’t have any answers, but I sure wish I did.
Comments 16
This article, might explain some of the disconnect, specially to some who insinuated there was sour grapes in one’s analysis of the 2008 campaign:
http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/the-obama-disconnect
January 2nd, 2010 at 10:55 am
I observed this phenomenon for years in the Philadelphia “Pinkquirer” (as my brother-in-law called it) before I cancelled my subscription. December and January, just after the election were the months for hard hitting pulitzer prize worthy journalism devoted to exposing the corruption of the Philly Democratic machine. The purpose, of course, was to build credibility as even handed. A related phenomenon was that the Inquirer always endorsed one hapless Republican before each election, always a carefully chosen one who had no prospect of beating the thoroughly corrupt Democratic incumbent.
Next September and October Fineman et al will be back aboard the train and pointing to their current writings as proof of their credibility as disinterested reporters. In November of 2012 President Obama will again be a golden child.
January 2nd, 2010 at 11:33 am
Further to this point. Don’t throw away those postage paid envelopes sent you by the lefty rags. Mail them back with polite handwritten notes on the subscription reply cards, always with a line through the bar code on the reply card. The lefties have to pay the postage, and they have to employ flunkies to sort the unscannable reply cards.
A little gesture, but quite satisfying. Note: Don’t tamper with bar code on the reply envelope. The post office needs that bar code to properly charge the lefties.
January 2nd, 2010 at 11:38 am
@ narciso:
Narcisco, thanks for sharing.
@ Sully:
Sully, I love this idea. It reminds me of the greatest act of revenge I ever heard–no doubt apocryphal–in which a guy rudely broke up with his girlfriend before heading out of town on a 2-week business trip, ordering to pack up her things and get out of his apartment before he returned. Upon his return he heard odd mutterings from his bedroom, where he found his phone off the hook. A voice in strange Asian tongue cooed the same message over and over. Before her exit, the girlfriend had dialed the weather in Hong Kong.
January 2nd, 2010 at 11:49 am
This story just gets worse and worse as to how they could not have known:
,http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/01/white_house_advisor_briefed_on.html
January 2nd, 2010 at 12:48 pm
This one’s true, Howard. Or at least I believe it to be true since I heard variants from several ex-executives of the same large privately held corporation and I somewhat knew the CEO in question.
The Owner/CEO was said to have twice sent execs in deep disfavor on business trips to South Africa only to have a pink slip waiting for them at the hotel where the corporate card payment for their stay had been cancelled. They would then find that their return air ticket had also been cancelled. Eventually, I was told, they got the money back via small claims court; but the tyrant CEO was said to actually revel in the story of messing with them in the exec lunch room when he got on the subject.
I believe this story because the same charming fellow hired a friend of mine who had asked for an introduction despite my warning that the guy could be tough to work for. A couple of months later when I was there on another completely unrelated matter, the CEO went out of his way to tell me how well the guy was working out in his role and how pleased he was with him. He was positively effusive in praising the guy.
Not two weeks after that I finished up a phone conversation with him and asked him to click me back to his secretary so I could switch over to my friend. Without any hesitation the CEO said something like, “Oh him. He was no damn good; so I fired his ass the other day.”
A great client. He always needed execs with experience in his industry, and he accepted the fact that he could only hire ones who were out of work because everybody in the industry knew of him – unless he would sign someone with a contract, which he would not do.
January 2nd, 2010 at 12:51 pm
@ Sully:
Fascinating stuff.
January 2nd, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Why is it that so many of us saw through Obama long before he became President? I guess love really is blind.
I generally read your columns at Hot Air, but came here to comment and ask if this is a typo that might need to be corrected:
“In a column published on New Year’s Eve, Fineman wonders allowed if Obama bit off more than he could chew…”
Should that be “wonders aloud”?
Thanks for your interesting comments. Happy New Year!
January 2nd, 2010 at 2:26 pm
@ Taximom:
Taximom, thank you for reading and for pointing out that typo. I have corrected it at both sites.
You have a Happy New Year too.
January 2nd, 2010 at 2:28 pm
@ Taximom:
You don’t happen to have a son named Stan who also drives, do you?
January 2nd, 2010 at 2:30 pm
Observing Sully’s initial comment above, maybe “wanders allowed” would be more appropriate.
January 2nd, 2010 at 2:45 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
January 2nd, 2010 at 3:36 pm
The wandering finger having writ, wonders aloud (with its little mouth, of course) what this world is coming too if wandering and wondering aloud are no longer allowed as it wanders through the wonders of space.
January 3rd, 2010 at 7:08 am
@ Sully:
Wow!
January 3rd, 2010 at 7:52 am
Hmmm, wandering and wondering allowed here, I see.
Fuster, I don’t have a son named Stan. Although the one son I have drives…me crazy!
Have a good day!
January 3rd, 2010 at 4:30 pm
@ Taximom:
Please excuse our frog pet fuster,
For being a nomenclature buster,
We’ve all here learned to muster,
Tolerance for his bluster.
Though sometimes he tends to rave,
And a rolled up newspaper crave,
When he acts up with a guest,
And makes himself a pest.
January 3rd, 2010 at 11:57 pm