Earlier this week, Barack Obama had his wife and kids sit down
for an interview with "Access Hollywood," and received glowing
coverage along these lines:
"Access Hollywood's" Maria Menounos met up with the
family in Butte, Mont., on Independence Day, where she found the
Obamas in a carefree and relaxed mood.
It may have been a campaign stop for the Obamas, but family, as
always, came first.
It was clearly a stunt designed to portray himself as a normal
family man, just a daddy who gets teased by his daughters like any
other. A typical move for an ambitious politician.
However, Obama is trying to prove he's a new kind of politician,
and so he quickly changed his tune:
Days after Barack Obama granted the first
television interview with his entire family, the presumptive
Democratic presidential nominee said he regrets thrusting his two
young daughters in the media spotlight.
"I think that we got carried away in the moment," Obama told NBC
Wednesday morning. "We were having a birthday party and everybody
was laughing, and suddenly this thing cropped up, and I didn't
catch it quickly enough, and I was surprised by the attention it
got."...
Appearing on ABC Wednesday morning, Obama said he didn't think
it was healthy for his two daughters to be so exposed.
"Particularly given the way it sort of went around the cable
stations, I don't think it's healthy, and it's something that we'll
be avoiding in the future," he said.
Speaking with CNN Tuesday, Menounos, the Access Hollywood
reporter, said the campaign had reached out to the
show for an interview and her only goal was to show the
Obama family dynamic.
Emphasis mine.
It is simply risible for a man who has been running for
president for a year and a half to pretend he was "surprised by the
attention" that the first interview with the Obama kids received.
Clearly, the Obama campaign wanted the video of him and his family
to be broadcast as widely as possible. That was the whole point of
doing the interview. By saying he regretted it only after the fact,
the video gets even more airtime, but he also gets favorable
coverage as somebody who wants to keep his kids out of the
spotlight and who is averse to exploiting them for political
gain.
I note this because it is part of a larger overall pattern with
Obama of doing the politically opportunistic thing, and then acting
as if he's taking the moral high road. He calls for a civil
campaign, dispatches a number of surrogates to attack John McCain's
military background, and then haltingly criticizes the surrogates
after the fact. He promises to take public financing, breaks his
promise to gain a political advantage, and then portrays his action
as a courageous stand against the system.
topics:
John McCain, Barack Obama, Television, Hollywood, Military
