Jul 30, 2008
The Audacity of Obama
Dana Milbank of the Washington Post is an unexceptional columnist, often offering so-so soufflés inflated by the sound of his own self-important voice. But don’t discount him because he practices journalism lite – his sense of self-importance is far more representative of today’s journalists than the profession would like to admit. Many journalists today aspire not to report but to comment. They want to become pundits, not gumshoe reporters. They seek a voice, not neutrality. And when they eye politicians climbing the public ladder, they like to bring them down a notch. After all, many reporters think they know more than these benighted folks who run our country. If a politician doesn’t show journalists proper obeisance, then beware – you’re now fair game for a media comeuppance.
Enter Milbank and his searing, snide column about Obama today (July 30). If Milbank is any indication of media zeitgeist, and for many reasons I think he is, then Obama better watch his back. The media are about to trip him up.
What Milbank wrote, essentially, is that Obama has gotten too big for his own good. Obama, in Milbank’s eyes, has an inflated self-image and a vain, narcissistic streak. He’s become a self-referential candidate, someone who thinks he is the movement that will lead him to the White House. “Barack Obama,” Milbank writes, “has long been his party's presumptive nominee. Now he's becoming its presumptuous nominee.” As Milbank describes it with his journalistic sneer, Obama orders up teleconferences, travels “in a bubble more insulating than the actual president’s,” and feels “confident enough” to give political advice to foreign heads of state.
He then offers up a devastatingly egotistical quote from Obama, likely taken out of context as is often the case with the press: "This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for," Obama apparently said in a talk with Democratic members of the House. "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."
The first media draft on Obama’s overseas trip was awe and admiration – for the flawlessness of the imagery, the presidential qualities that Obama displayed, the message that he can lead America and the world in perilous times and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with foreign leaders.
But now a second draft is being written, and it oozes with media resentment – that Obama is presumptuous, egotistical, infused with moral vanity and deep self-importance. For the press, the overseas trip now fits a pattern of arrogance, audacity, and hubris that they increasingly see as characteristic of Obama. Filled with their own self-importance, the media feel a need to humble him.
John McCain will certainly fuel this emerging media narrative, and he has every interest in doing so. The McCain camp first tried to define Obama as a flip-flopper, but that didn’t work. Now they’re suggesting that Obama has no values other than a belief in himself and his own ambition. With the media beginning to pick up this theme as well, the Obama campaign better take note. That could be the Swift Boat frame of the 2008 election.
Enter Milbank and his searing, snide column about Obama today (July 30). If Milbank is any indication of media zeitgeist, and for many reasons I think he is, then Obama better watch his back. The media are about to trip him up.
What Milbank wrote, essentially, is that Obama has gotten too big for his own good. Obama, in Milbank’s eyes, has an inflated self-image and a vain, narcissistic streak. He’s become a self-referential candidate, someone who thinks he is the movement that will lead him to the White House. “Barack Obama,” Milbank writes, “has long been his party's presumptive nominee. Now he's becoming its presumptuous nominee.” As Milbank describes it with his journalistic sneer, Obama orders up teleconferences, travels “in a bubble more insulating than the actual president’s,” and feels “confident enough” to give political advice to foreign heads of state.
He then offers up a devastatingly egotistical quote from Obama, likely taken out of context as is often the case with the press: "This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for," Obama apparently said in a talk with Democratic members of the House. "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."
The first media draft on Obama’s overseas trip was awe and admiration – for the flawlessness of the imagery, the presidential qualities that Obama displayed, the message that he can lead America and the world in perilous times and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with foreign leaders.
But now a second draft is being written, and it oozes with media resentment – that Obama is presumptuous, egotistical, infused with moral vanity and deep self-importance. For the press, the overseas trip now fits a pattern of arrogance, audacity, and hubris that they increasingly see as characteristic of Obama. Filled with their own self-importance, the media feel a need to humble him.
John McCain will certainly fuel this emerging media narrative, and he has every interest in doing so. The McCain camp first tried to define Obama as a flip-flopper, but that didn’t work. Now they’re suggesting that Obama has no values other than a belief in himself and his own ambition. With the media beginning to pick up this theme as well, the Obama campaign better take note. That could be the Swift Boat frame of the 2008 election.