Barack Obama ran for president promising to win back the respect
of "the world," which George W. Bush has alienated. So the big
question is this: How long after Obama's inauguration will it take
before "the world" begins to sour on him—begins to suspect that he
is one of us, not one of them?
The answer is minus 16 days.
On Sunday, January 4, the website of London's Guardian
published a column by Simon Tisdall faulting Obama for failing to
side with Hamas in its war against Israel:
Obama has remained wholly silent during the Gaza crisis. His
aides say he is following established protocol that the US has only
one president at a time....
But evidence is mounting that Obama is already losing ground
among key Arab and Muslim audiences that cannot understand why,
given his promise of change, he has not spoken out. Arab
commentators and editorialists say there is growing disappointment
at Obama's detachment—and that his failure to distance himself from
George Bush's strongly pro-Israeli stance is encouraging the belief
that he either shares Bush's bias or simply does not care.
The Al-Jazeera satellite television station recently broadcast
footage of Obama on holiday in Hawaii, wearing shorts and playing
golf, juxtaposed with scenes of bloodshed and mayhem in Gaza. Its
report criticising "the deafening silence from the Obama team"
suggested Obama is losing a battle of perceptions among Muslims
that he may not realise has even begun.
Back home, however, the press was still pro-Obama—and giddily
so. Roger Cohen of the New York Times got into the mood in
his January 14 column:
This 47-year-old man of mixed race, whose very name—O-Ba-Ma—has
the three-syllable universality of a child's lullaby, has always
had something of the providential about him, a global figure who
looks more like the guy at the local bodega than the guys on dollar
bills. That's the magic.
Two days earlier, Mike Lupica of New York's Daily News
spoke truth to power:
He does not get sworn in as the 44th President for another eight
days, but it is as if Barack Obama, the only one who can get us out
of this mess, is running the country already. Because they have
already started in on him.
It is still business as usual in Washington at a time when our
economy, a direct result of business as usual, feels like the real
terrorist threat these days.
Obama is a new beginning at a time we need a new beginning as
much as we have in nearly 80 years. We finally have a President we
want to believe in, a President who again feels like the smartest
guy in the room. Yet, before the game even begins, he sees what he
will be up against…
So sweet was Obama's honeymoon that on January 4, Chicago
Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin observed that journalists were
"deferential, eager to please, prepared to keep a careful
distance":
The Obama news conferences tell that story, making one yearn for
the return of the always-irritating Sam Donaldson to awaken the
slumbering press to the notion that decorum isn't all it's cracked
up to be.
The press corps, most of us, don't even bother raising our hands
any more to ask questions because Obama always has before him a
list of correspondents who've been advised they will be called upon
that day.
Imagine the howls of outrage if George W. Bush had tried that.
And the contrasts between the press's attitudes toward Obama and
his predecessor extended to matters of substance— including areas
in which Obama was moving away from his own campaign promises and
toward Bush's positions.
On January 12, the Associated Press reported that "Obama is
preparing to issue an executive order his first week in office—and
perhaps his first day—to close the U.S. military prison at
Guantanamo Bay"— just as he had promised. But the AP saved the
actual news for the second paragraph:
It's unlikely the detention facility at the Navy base in Cuba
will be closed anytime soon. In an interview last weekend, Obama
said it would be "a challenge" to close it even within the first
100 days of his administration.
By the end of that week, the Washington Post was
reporting that Obama had said in an interview that "he will
consider it a failure if he has not closed the U.S. military prison
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by the end of his first term in office."
Obama's promises to close Guantanamo may end up meaning as much as
Bush's. At least the New York Times anticipated this. It
published an article noting that a "review of the government's
public files underscores the challenges of fulfilling that
promise"—on November 3. The day before Obama's election, that is,
the Times discovered that Guantanamo was filled with
terrorists.
Similarly, in a January 11 interview with ABC's George
Stephanopoulos, Obama backed away from his position that
intelligence agencies interrogating terrorists should be bound by
the Army Field Manual.
"We shouldn't be making judgments on the basis of incomplete
information or campaign rhetoric," Obama told Stephanopoulos.
Pressed for specifics, Obama would say only that he believes
waterboarding is "torture." Three days later, a National Public
Radio commentator opined, "The moral issues related to torture are
not a slam-dunk." Now he tells us!
On domestic policy, too, both Obama and the press showed
themselves to be far more flexible than during the campaign and the
Bush years. The funniest example was a New York Times
editorial calling for a tax increase but sympathizing with Obama's
evident decision not to push for one just yet:
We also acknowledge that a tax increase on the rich, though
feasible, could backfire in these tense times. Because it is hard
to explain and easy to demagogue, it could foster a confusing
debate that might impair confidence just when confidence needs to
be revived.
But even if he skips the income tax increase this year, Mr.
Obama must press for increases in coming years.
If the Times finds its own editorial position "hard to
explain," perhaps that is because it is wrong—or because the
Times editorialists aren't very good at their jobs.
IN A JANUARY 7 interview with CNBC, Obama gave another
indication that the press's love for him may be unrequited. "I very
rarely read good press," the president-elect told host John
Harwood. "I often read bad press, not because I agree with it, but
because I want to get a sense of, are there areas where I'm falling
short and I can do better?"
Yet during the transition at least, even conservative
commentators were frequently favorable toward Obama—in part out of
respect for the office, in part because he had moved away from many
of his left-wing campaign promises, and in part because, ideology
aside, the inauguration of the first black president was a
milestone nearly everyone could celebrate.
So where does Obama go to read "bad press"? Let's just hope the
president isn't getting all his news from the
Guardian.
