What If Bush Had Done That?
It’s a complaint from the right so common it’s become a cliche, but that doesn’t mean the complaint isn’t valid.
A four-hour stop in New Orleans, on his way to a $3 million fundraiser.
Snubbing the Dalai Lama.
Signing off on a secret deal with drug makers.
Freezing out a TV network.
Doing more fundraisers than the last president. More golf, too.
President Barack Obama has done all of those things — and more.
What’s remarkable is what hasn’t happened. These episodes haven’t become metaphors for Obama’s personal and political character — or consuming controversies that sidetracked the rest of his agenda.
It’s a sign that the media’s echo chamber can be a funny thing, prone to the vagaries of news judgment, and an illustration that, in politics, context is everything.
Conservatives look on with a mix of indignation and amazement and ask: Imagine the fuss if George W. Bush had done these things?
With the Bush administration the media were antagonistic observers constantly looking for ways to cast the administration as being wrong, if not outright stupid. Skepticism and a dedication to the truth, as opposed to political spin, is a necessary part of an independent press. Antagonism lends itself less to accuracy and truth than to vengeful reporting intended to influence the public more than inform it.
But with Obama we’ve seen the flip side of things. Instead of being antagonistic, the media may as well be working for the White House press office in that most of them are defensive of Obama as opposed to actively looking for things to bring him down.
