The president of the United States rightly asks to be taken as the president the leader of the country, not a party partisan when he wishes to address the children of this country. The people of the country rightly ask the president to be presidential not a party partisan when it comes to the media.
It is beneath the dignity of the president to hand out report cards to the major television networks, ranking them according to their friendliness to his administration.
Many in the national media gave Barack Obama a free ride during the campaign of 2008 and the first eight months or so of his administration. If it was all right for Obama to take this as a special gesture of grace, it was up to him to exhibit the same grace when the tone in some media outlets would change, which was inevitable.
No president in this countrys history has been free of criticism, sometimes acid, unfair or unfactual, by the press (and later the broadcast and electronic media). How a president responds says a lot. Recent, petty remarks by the Obama team from Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to deputy communications director Dan Pfeiffer to his boss Anita Dunn, reportedly under Obamas assent brought neither Obama nor this country any dignity.
What apparently got the Obama team started was a New York Times story reporting on the criticism he received in some circles for wanting to address the nations students. We thought his address was a good idea, as we said on this page, but not to report on those who disagreed? The irony is that the Times has been one of Obamas biggest editorial supporters. That doesnt mean it will stop reporting the news! The Washington Post, also a big Obama supporter, also offended him with one of its news stories. The dignity of the presidency required Obama and his team to respond to all this if they responded at all with a bit of self-deprecating humor.
And Fox News? Its tough to regard it as merely opinion journalism masquerading as news, as Anita Dunn put it in a fumbling effort to be objective. Fox exposed White House czar Van Jones as a 9/11 conspiracy nut. The right response for the Obama team would have been to swallow the mistake and move on. The Obama response? Blame the messenger the most immature tack in the media-government playbook. Of course Obama didnt like the Van Jones coverage; he wasnt vetted properly.
In government, if you make a mistake, dont be surprised if the press and the media uncover it. Thats democracy. Thats freedom. And thats great.
Perhaps spoiled by the free pass in much of the media, Obama or his team forgot that dissent defines democracy. Opposition voices. Debate. Differences in perspective. Ill defend to the death your right to say it. And, yes, mistakes, by both the politicians and the media its all part of our political system.
Speaking of mistakes, Fox has made them. So have the Obamas favored news organizations, CNN and MSNBC. And so has Anita Dunn, who, reports Charles Krauthammer, extolled mass murderer Maos political philosophy at her high school graduation.
The job of the president is to be presidential, not to engage in squabbling matches with the media, still less to attempt to manipulate them by excluding enemies from access and press conferences. We thought the enemies list went out with Richard Nixon.
