By TFPP Writer
Robert Gehl reports how does Obama get away with it?
How does one of the worst presidents in American history manage to look presidential – even relatively popular and effective – in the eyes of the American people?
It’s the media, stupid.
He writes that usually, during a campaign season, the incumbent’s record is a major campaign issue. But not this year. How? Because the media is protecting him. The media is “putty in Obama’s hands.”
He heads a savvy public-relations machine that markets him like a Hollywood celebrity, a role he obligingly and successfully plays. One of the machine’s key tactics is to place Mr. Obama in as many positive news and photo situations as possible. Ronald Reagan’s advisers were considered masters of putting their man in the best possible light, but they look like amateurs compared with the Obama operation-which has the added advantage of a particularly obliging news media.
A sampling over the past few weeks: A Washington Post photo captures President Obama blowing giant bubbles “At the final White House Science Fair of his presidency.” A New York Times photo shows the president mobbed by women admirers at a ceremony designating the Sewall-Belmont House on Capitol Hill as a national museum for women’s equality.
An ABC News video gives us Mr. Obama’s helicopter landing on the rainy grounds of Britain’s Windsor Castle, and then we visit the president and first lady lunching with Queen Elizabeth II on her 90th birthday.
In other news clips, we see a doctoral-robed Obama speaking to graduates of Howard University, a tuxedoed Obama yukking it up at the White House Correspondents Association dinner, a brave Obama drinking a glass of water in Flint, Mich., a cool Obama grooving with Aretha Franklin at a White House jazz concert, a serious Obama intently listening to Saudi King Salman, a jubilant Obama on his showy trip to Cuba. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but with Mr. Obama you also get the thousand words.
The media is charged with holding our elected officials accountable. But the press – especially the national press – love Barack Obama – his style, his politics, his demeanor. They’re not willing to criticize any of his policies for fear of tearing down their favorite president. In other words, as Benedetto said: they’re a “media happy to be managed.”
http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/us/brutal-cartoon-exposes-how-the-media-views-conservatives