SEEDS OF MSM DISENCHANTMENT
As enamored of Obama as the media were, it was not a relationship without some snags. As sure as familiarity breeds contempt, some reporters began to notice Obama’s unflappably high opinion of himself and that in some cases he was acting like a prima donna. The New Republic’s Gabriel Sherman wrote in August 2008 that the press’s flame for Obama “seems to have dwindled.” Reporters had begun to complain Obama was not transparent as he claimed, with one exclaiming Obama’s handlers were “total tightwads with information.” Another asserted the Obama campaign approached the press with a sense of entitlement. “They’re an arrogant operation. Young and arrogant. They don’t believe in transparency with their own campaign.”
Obama’s team was most defensive when reporters looked into Obama’s sketchy biography. “They’re terrified of people poking around Obama’s life,” said one reporter. “The whole Obama narrative is built around this narrative that Obama and David Axelrod built, and, like all stories, it’s not entirely true. So they have to be protective of the crown jewels.” The campaign reportedly went so far as to request Obama’s old friends and Harvard classmates not to talk to the press without permission.61
New York Times chief political correspondent Adam Nagourney received a terse e-mail from Obama’s press office complaining about a Times poll and about Nagourney and Megan Thee’s corresponding front-page article interpreting it, “Poll Finds Obama Isn’t Closing Divide on Race.” Nagourney responded and thought the matter was resolved, but discovered the next day the Obama campaign had issued a statement slamming his article. Nagourney said, “I’ve never had an experience like this, with this campaign or others. I thought they crossed the line. If you have a problem with a story I write, call me first. I’m a big boy. I can handle it. But they never called. They attacked me like I’m a political opponent.”62
Nagourney was not the only reporter gratuitously offended by Obama. In April, New York Times reporter Helene Cooper complained that in a joint presser with British prime minister Gordon Brown, Obama tried to cut off the press after only six questions. “Is President Obama trying to muzzle his press corps?” she asked.63
In June 2008 Obama “ditched” the press on his plane for a secret meeting with Hillary Clinton at Senator Dianne Feinstein’s Washington home, leaving reporters “trapped” on the flight to Chicago. This provoked a number of D.C. bureau chiefs for major news organizations to send an irate letter to Obama aides Robert Gibbs and David Plouffe, threatening not to reimburse the Obama campaign for the flight. “The decision to mislead reporters is a troubling one,” said the letter. “We hope this does not presage a relationship with the Obama campaign that is not based on a mutual respect for the truth.”64
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank also commented on Obama’s “presumptuousness” in the summer of 2008 for virtually assuming the role of president before he won the election. “Barack Obama has long been his party’s presumptive nominee,” wrote Milbank. “Now he’s becoming its presumptuous nominee.” Milbank cited Obama’s “presidential-style world tour,” where world leaders and American military brass lined up to show him respect; his tele-conference with the actual president’s Treasury secretary; his meeting with the Pakistani prime minister; his meeting with the Federal Reserve chairman for a briefing; and his appearance at a House Democrat “presidential-style pep rally” on Capitol Hill. On his way to that meeting, according to Milbank, his motorcade was more insulating than the actual president’s. Traffic was routinely shut down for his cars, even to facilitate his appearance at high money fundraisers. He reportedly told congressional Democrats, “This is the moment... that the world is waiting for.... I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.”65
As president, Obama has been quick to lecture others, but just as fast to exempt himself from his own advice. When he signed his “stimulus” bill into law, he lectured that everyone must sacrifice for the greater good—that everyone must have “some skin in the game.” But Obama reportedly threw a party at the White House every three days during his first year in office. As Republican congressman Bob Latta sardonically remarked, “Let the good times roll.”66
GET BACK IN TOUCH
It wasn’t just the press that began to notice that Obama, the man, didn’t quite live up to Obama, the mirage. Among the first to withdraw support were conservative elites who’d given him the benefit of the doubt. Independents followed suit, and by the end of his first year in office, even many Democrats and much of the hard Left had begun to turn against him for various reasons. The same held true for some mainstream Democrats.
In March 2010, Dee Dee Myers, White House press secretary under President Clinton, wrote an open memo to Obama urging him to “Get Back in Touch.” Clinton “never tired” of happily mixing with the people and demonstrating his empathy for their plight, she argued. Clinton might have been faulted for his “neediness,” but at least that caused him to interact with the people. Obama, on the other hand, projects “self-reliance: he’s calm, he’s cool; he’s self-possessed. . . . But while eschewing emotion—and its companion, vulnerability—Obama should be careful not to sacrifice empathy, the ‘I feel your pain’ connection that sustained Clinton. . . . If people believe you’re on their side, they will trust your decisions.” But too often, said Myers, Obama sends the signal “that he stands alone—and likes it that way.”67
According to Myers, Obama needs to emulate Clinton’s habit of reminding “people that he was like them.” People, though, still personally approve of Obama even if they don’t approve of his policies, she said. They like him; they “want to have a beer with him. They’re just not sure he wants to have a beer with them.”68
On these points Myers is right, except her advice is wishful thinking. Obama sends the signal that he likes standing alone because he does. He is aloof and arrogant. He most certainly doesn’t want to have beers with the people, except where he can exploit that image to extricate himself from a political jam—as with the “beer summit,” designed to contain the political damage he sustained after accusing a Cambridge police officer of “acting stupidly” and implying the officer was racist for arresting his friend, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., even though Obama admitted he didn’t know all the facts of the incident.
It’s not just that Obama doesn’t want to have a beer with “ordinary folks,” as he refers to us; he also didn’t seem too anxious to pay his respects to the victims of the Fort Hood terrorist attack, in which Islamic fanatic Nidal Malik Hasan killed twelve U.S. soldiers and a civilian and wounded dozens more. Apparently, Obama feared a high-profile reaction to the attack might call more attention to this horrific act of Islamic terrorism, undermining his dogmatic denial of any connection between Islam and terrorism. So he casually waited a few days after the massacre to travel to Fort Hood, showing a “strange disconnectedness,” according to British reporter Toby Harnden. Harnden wrote, “A year into his presidency . . . Mr. Obama seems a curiously bloodless president. If he experiences passion, he seldom shows it.”
Obama’s first comments on the attack were certainly “disconnected” and “bloodless.” As Americans across the nation tuned in to live TV for the president’s reaction to the massacre of American troops on U.S. soil, they encountered a strange scene. Speaking at the conclusion of a conference on Native American issues, Obama opened his speech by good-naturedly praising the “extraordinary” conference, giving a bizarre “shout out” to “Dr. Joe Medicine Crow,” and declaring that continuing the conference’s business was a “top priority” for his administration. Then, he paid a few minutes of eerily dispassionate lip service to the victims of the “horrible incident” at Fort Hood before finishing his remarks by once again praising the results of the conference.
Writer Robert A. George was horrified at the inappropriateness of Obama’s performance. He wrote, “Instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of symp
athy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks.... Anyone at home aware of the major news story of the previous hours had to have been stunned. An incident like this requires a scrapping of the early light banter.”69
In his next press conference on the event Obama offered “an update on the tragedy that took place,” which, as Toby Harnden noted, was like treating Hasan’s killing spree “as if it was an earthquake and not a terrorist attack from an enemy within. . . . Completely missing was the eloquence that Mr. Obama employs when talking about himself. Absent too was any sense that the President empathized with the families and comrades of those murdered.”70
Contrast Obama’s reaction to that of former President George W. Bush, who upon hearing about the massacre, drove thirty miles with his wife Laura to Fort Hood and spent “considerable time” visiting the victims’ families in private, having instructed the base commander they wanted no press coverage of their visit.71
Obama similarly turned heads at his signing of the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act, with his ludicrous comments on the Islamic terrorists’ beheading of Pearl. Obama told reporters, “Obviously, the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is.” As blogger Jim Hoft aptly noted, “No, Barack. It was horrifying. . . . It had nothing to do with freedom of the press. They beheaded Daniel Pearl because he was an American and a Jew. They beheaded Daniel Pearl because they were Islamic radicals. Something you have not yet figured out.”72
OBAMA MOSTLY HEARS OBAMA
While many Obama supporters laud his supposed willingness to listen, he is actually better at pretending to listen. His mind is generally set in stone on his big agenda items. As Sarah Palin wrote following the Massachusetts Senate election, “Instead of sensibly telling the American people, ‘I’m listening,’ the president is saying, ‘Listen up, people!’”73 Similarly, former congressman Ernest Istook wrote, “I’ve attended at least 15 State of the Union speeches, and this one will stand out mostly for the fact that Obama could have said he listened to America and learned from us—but he didn’t.”74
Obama’s disinclination to genuine listening was starkly evident during his televised healthcare summit. In his promos for the event and in his opening remarks, he promised to listen to all ideas. But as the Washington Times noted, “Turns out he meant he’d be listening to his own voice.” He spoke 119 minutes, more than all Republicans combined (110 minutes), and more than all other Democrats combined (114 minutes), resulting in 233 total minutes for Democrats and 119 minutes for Republicans—illustrating his idea of partisan balance. When Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell complained early in the proceedings that Democrats had controlled more than twice the amount of time as Republicans, Obama first denied it, then shot back, “You’re right. There was an imbalance on the opening statements because—I’m the president. . . . I didn’t count my time in terms of dividing it evenly.”75 Just in case Obama wasn’t clear, he reminded Senator John McCain during the summit, after McCain suggested that the American people overwhelmingly rejected ObamaCare and opposed special deals for certain states: “Let me make this point, John, because we’re not campaigning anymore, the election is over.”76
Of all the stories illustrating Obama’s unwillingness to listen, the granddaddy had to be his statement following the partisan passage of ObamaCare that fateful Sunday night, March 21, 2010. He announced, “We proved that this government—a government of the people and by the people—still works for the people.... To every unsung American who took the time to sit down and write a letter or type out an e-mail hoping your voice would be heard—it has been heard tonight. . . . Tonight’s vote . . . is a victory for the American people.”77 All this, in the face of the people’s overwhelming opposition to ObamaCare as shown in poll after poll. And all this, despite the fact that the bill, notwithstanding overwhelming Democratic majorities in both chambers, could only be passed through legislative trickery, executive deception, political bribes, arm-twisting, and a meaningless executive order to supposedly negate the bill’s abortion funding provisions.
It was easy for Obama to appear congenial, even-tempered, and empathetic when everything was going his way and he was being treated as supernatural and infallible. But when reality finally set in, some of his seemingly positive attributes (coolness) were recognized for what they were (detachment). As Commentary’s Jennifer Rubin noted, “It’s hard to change who you are. And who Obama is, though an asset in the campaign, has now become a liability for him.”78
SOBBING KINDERGARTENERS
As shown in his statements on the Fort Hood massacre and the Daniel Pearl tribute, Obama seems to lack ordinary human emotions. This isn’t just a lack of empathy, but a marked insensitivity to things big and small, and a tendency to convert any situation into being about himself—no matter how inappropriate. While stumping for his healthcare bill at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Washington, he drew upon the usual anecdotal sob story to prove that yet another ill person had been mistreated by an insurance company. But with this one there was a particular twist. He injected into the dying woman’s sad story the bizarre tidbit that “she insisted she’s going to be buried in an Obama t-shirt.” The crowd laughed uncomfortably at his odd statement. But his determined expression showed he wasn’t joking, and that he believed the story was more poignant with the inclusion of the lady’s Obama-adoring request. 79
In another incident, more than 100 kindergarteners from Stafford County, Virginia, got up early for a field trip to the White House. When they arrived just ten minutes late because of heavy traffic, they were locked out. “We were going to the White House,” said 5-year-old Cameron Stine, “but we couldn’t get in so I felt sad.” Obama staffers claimed the kids’ entry into the White House would have interfered with the president’s scheduled event with the Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers. Cameron’s mother Paty Stine said, “I was angry cause they were disappointed.... Here we have President Obama and his administration saying, ‘we are for the common, middle class people,’ and here he is not letting 150 5-and 6-year olds into the White House because he’s throwing a lunch for a bunch of grown millionaires.” The White House later released a statement claiming the kids were really an hour late and expressing hope the tour could be rescheduled. 80
Though Obama frequently denounced President Bush for tarnishing America’s image abroad, he didn’t hesitate to snub Europeans when it interfered with his personal agenda. The day before he was scheduled to receive his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, Obama made news across Scandinavia for declining lunch with Norway’s King Harald V and even deciding not to visit his own Nobel exhibit—a tradition among prize recipients. “Everybody wants to visit the Peace Center except Obama,” reported the Norwegian daily Aftenposten. “A bit arrogant—a bit bad,” read the headline. “It’s very sad,” said Bente Erichsen, the Nobel Peace Center Director. “I totally understand why the Norwegian public is upset.”
Obama also skipped a concert in Oslo that had been arranged in his honor, as well as a meeting with Norwegian children who had planned to greet him in front of City Hall. “The American president is acting like an elephant in a porcelain shop,” observed Norwegian public relations expert Rune Morck-Wergeland. “In Norwegian culture, it’s very important to keep an agreement. We’re religious about that, and Obama’s actions have been clumsy. You just don’t say no to an invitation from a European king. Maybe Obama’s advisers are not very educated about European culture, but he is coming off as rude, even if he doesn’t mean to.”81
CAN’T BE BOTHERED
Obama’s impatience for dealing with the day to day details of his office has been widely noted. He has a big vision and doesn’t enjoy getting his hands dirty in policy details, even legislation essential to his agenda. He had a grand vision for socialized medicine that pundits routinely called “Obama’s plan,
” or “ObamaCare,” but he didn’t even have his own plan when the Senate passed its controversial healthcare bill on Christmas Eve 2009. He later announced the basic points of his plan, but it was all smoke and mirrors, because the only bill that had been passed, and stood a chance of being signed into law, was the Senate bill. And that bill contained provisions Obama claimed he didn’t approve, and omitted essentials he promised his bill would contain. How else could he get away with lying about the fact that “his plan” would not include federal funding for abortion, for example, when the Senate bill clearly did?
By issuing his demands while standing outside the legislative process, Obama could deny accountability for controversial provisions of the healthcare bill. He was so far removed at times that Republican senator Charles Grassley jabbed him for his “nerve” in going “sightseeing in Paris” while exhorting lawmakers back home to ramrod the bill through Congress.82 He reluctantly learned his lesson when he was pressured into postponing a family trip to Indonesia to stay in Washington until the House voted on the Senate bill. By then, he realized he would have to personally twist arms of recalcitrant Democratic congressmen, some of whom, according to Politico, were “ducking” his calls.83
Obama also showed his aloofness in taking a Gulfstream Air Force jet with his wife for an expensive, taxpayer-supported date-night in New York City. So absorbed was this White House with photo-op-itis that it made the enormous blunder of dispatching a backup aircraft for Air Force One for a low-altitude flight over New York City, costing more than $300,000 and panicking some local residents who thought they were witnessing another 9/11-style attack.84
Crimes Against Liberty Page 4
