Someone asked me the other day how my post-election predictions were turning out, regarding press coverage of Obama and other matters.
It’s a bit early to know. But one thing is becoming apparent: the electorate is significantly less happy with the reality of Obama than the hope and change they thought they voted for. So far, the press has not begun to savage Obama in the ways I thought might happen. But Obama is finally beginning to be criticized for his sheer incompetence, the biggest evidence of which is his mismanagement of the process and the message surrounding his attempted takeover of US healthcare, though his astronomical deficit plans are a close second. And, of course, the matters are related. Those enormous deficits are the projections of Obama’s plans if the government takeover of healthcare is NOT passed. If it is, everything is worse. Far worse.
To be fair, it was bound to be a hard sell. Americans are a cantankerous lot when they see (though they are a bit slow) that their freedom is about to be stolen. But Obama’s twin errors were: 1) leaving it up to Pelosi and Reid to craft a bill and 2) telling obvious lies that could be checked (“You can keep your current health insurance if you like it, even if this plan becomes law.”) Pelosi and Reid are so far inside the beltway that they simply had no concept of how bad it was going to look to Americans that congress-critters hadn’t read the bill, didn’t understand it, couldn’t defend it based on facts about its contents, but wouldn’t themselves be willing to live under “the public option” as a matter of course. Obama was foolish to trust them in this. Of course, Obama’s lack of experience in national politics, and in managing a political situation not in control of a Chicago-like machine, is what really betrayed him.
He compounded it by doubling down on obvious lies. Nothing in the bill would stop any employer from throwing employees into the “public option,” and plenty in the bill would provide them with motivation to do so. Americans began to see that the promises were mutually incompatible, which included coverage for the “uninsured,” lower prices, freedom to choose your providers, no tax increase, and no rationing. It was as if someone tried to convince them that you really CAN have it “good, fast and cheap.” Americans know better, when they start paying attention.
Many Americans felt robbed by the arbitrariness of “cash for clunkers,” knowing that it was a straight government giveaway for which THEY could not qualify, but would surely pay. Twinned with this is the planned trillion-dollar-deficits-per-year for the next decade, even if the Obama, Pelosi and Reid are NOT able to extend government’s already partially accomplished takeover of healthcare. And that’s probably optimistic, based on current projections. Americans got numb to billions…. but trillions is something else entirely. And they simply don’t want to pay it. To be blunt, they’re terrified of it.
Regarding another prediction I made, I continue to believe that if the terrorists want Obama to be president for two terms, they’d be wise to just hold off attacking the US until his second term. Such an attack, in the face of Obama’s prosecution of those who would protect us, namely the CIA, would surely result in yet more support peeling off from him. He might try to regain that support by taking some dramatic action… but it would probably be of no more worth than Clinton bombing aspirin factories in the Sudan.
Support is also peeling off on Obama’s left. In particular, the anti-war types who were seduced by Obama’s Iraq pullout plans have to be disappointed that he is adding troops to Afghanistan, and seems relatively serious about following the advice of his generals…. nearly the only thing Obama has done right so far. Peaceniks are getting off the bus in droves, apparently having signed up for the wrong tour package.
In the meantime, I think one aspect of my predictions is right. The press is STILL not seriously criticizing Obama’s policies, but it is starting to criticize Obama the man and president for his failures to carry them out. As disdain for the puerility of their annointed choice begins to grow, some of that may yet lead to the investigative journalism that should have been done before the elections.
There is such a thing as a need to survive. As the public distrust for Obama grows, if the press continues to support him and/or his policies unrealistically, its credibility gap will only grow. At some point, the people who own the newspapers and networks that are hemorrhaging readers and viewers will start to count the cost.
When and if major media outlets start reporting on how other outlets sat on stories that would have damaged Obama during the election season, you’ll know the world has shifted. There are probably a lot more of these than we know. The dynamic will be simple: reporters share info over drinks. One lets slip that his editor sat on something damaging to Obama. The other reporter, desperate to salvage a sinking career and job prospects (and there are a LOT of people in that situation), talks his similarly desperate editor into publishing or broadcasting. And the feeding frenzy begins. There’s a LOT of that stuff out there.
I wonder how many more job losses NBC and MSNBC will have to have, how many more major newspapers will have to cut jobs or worse, before simple survival instinct sets in. It’s a toss up… are they just loopy, or are they lemmings?
But no one believes them anymore.
