PBS 'Washington Week' Panel: GOP Wave Not So High, Obama 'Punished for His Effectiveness'

By Tim Graham | January 05, 2011 | 08:51

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The December 31 edition of PBS's Washington Week tried to spin the year 2010 in the most favorable way for Obama. First, Washington Post reporter Karen Tumulty tried to suggest the massive Democratic losses in the House were somehow pretty conventional, yawn:

Well, I think it shook out as a pretty conventional midterm election. All year long, right up until Election Day, the Democrats kept telling us elections are really choices between two candidates and the Republicans kept saying no, this is going to be a referendum on the president. And that’s what midterms are for after presidential elections.They are often the American public kind of putting its foot on the brake just a bit.

A 63-seat loss for the Democrats? That's not so high a tidal wave. Then host Gwen Ifill suggested the electorate missed something. It was a better year for America and Obama than the voters thought:

IFILL: But it seems also that when you go back and you look at the year, which was a long year, you think about the things that actually did happen. Health care bill was passed, financial reform was passed. Even things that were incredibly unpopular like TARP and bailouts, actually a lot of that money now has been repaid. Was it a better year than we were able to see with our noses pressed to the glass?

TODD PURDUM, VANITY FAIR: I think in a hindsight it will turn out to be a better looking year than we were able to see. Obviously part of what the Republicans were reacting to is they felt President Obama got too much done. It’s not that they thought he was doing nothing or being ineffective, he’s being punished in some ways for his very effectiveness and for getting these landmark pieces of legislation through.

Time's Michael Duffy agreed that while Obama won't "accomplish" as much in 2011, that may make him more popular, but the panel didn't really conclude that liberalism was unpopular. It was "one of the paradoxes" of the new year. As usual, liberal reporters expect/hope that Republicans will be too conservative to beat Obama, and that nobody would be liberal enough to run against Obama in a primary. Purdum, a former New York Times reporter married to former Clinton press aide Dee Dee Myers, even started comparing Obama to liberal movie presidents:

TUMULTY: The Republican primary process may push the party to the right in ways that could make it more difficult for them in a general. And certainly that’s what the White House is hoping.

IFILL: Does that leave Obama with a fairly clear prance to the Democratic nomination without any Democratic challenges?

PURDUM: I don’t think he’ll get any kind of serious challenge from the left. At least, I really wouldn’t expect that. He’s really done what – in “The American President” there’s a great line where Michael J. Fox tells Michael Douglas, that high approval rating isn’t worth anything unless you take it for a spin every once in a while. And I think President Obama –

IFILL: Go to fiction – (laughter).

PURDUM: I think President Obama took his approval rating out for the biggest spin in modern American history and he got dinged up by it and he got a lot of achievements. And so I think now he’ll have to recalibrate and he’ll have to go back.

TUMULTY: And his approval, by the way, is still higher than either of the two political parties.

PURDUM: And it’s been quite steady at around 50 percent for the better part of 18 months.

That's not exactly right. You could say Obama "spent" his approval, but you can't stay his approval is steady. In June 2009, Obama's job approval/disapproval numbers in the ABC/Washington Post poll were 65 and 31. In December, they were 49/47. Or the NBC/Wall Street Journal numbers were 56/34 in June '09, and 45/48 this December.

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Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow Tim Graham on Twitter.

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What are these people smoking?

Submitted by merly1 on Wed, 01/05/2011 - 9:27am.

Really! The press was continually upset by Bush's 600 billion dollar deficts, war, Gitmo, and 100-200k per month job growth.........Obama gives us the perpetual 1.5 trillion deficits, more war, still Gitmo, terrible job growth, AWOL on the oil leak--yet, the press spins and spins. Gawd, if this were W over the last two years the press would literally be in revolt--probably pushing for a real revolt.
Similiarly, the press was joyous when the Congress flipped in 2007, but now after that crew added 5.3 trillion in new federal debt, economic collapse, and funded two war surges, where is the "JOY" that Congress has flipped again....;o)

Numbers and spin

Submitted by KC Mulville on Wed, 01/05/2011 - 9:30am.

For all the polls, focus groups, momentum, and spin, the numbers that matter are the ones that last for two years: the balance of government. As we saw from the last two years, America hated what that Congress was doing, but they did it anyway.

The unavoidable reality is that the House is decidedly Republican, the Senate is slightly Democrat, and the White House is just plain liberal. Unless the Republicans cave, nothing much will happen in the next two years, because the political reality simply prevents anything large from getting through.
In the absence of any substantial agenda getting through, the void will be filled with mostly meaningless posturing. The Democrats will try to prevent the after-wave of the Tea Party from taking the White House, because that will give the GOP the same balance that the Democrats had for the last two years.

In other words, journalists will fill their air with meaningless patter. Like the set of spins shown in the post, they'll try to make something out of nothing. It'll be like watching a college football game between two (3-8) teams, where both teams keep punting. What can the announcers say? They have to fill the air with something, and it usually means that the "expert" in the booth comes up with the worst possible theories.

What else can they do? They're paid to express themselves, even when there's nothing to comment on. That won't stop them from talking.

The media is still in denial

Submitted by Chris Norman on Wed, 01/05/2011 - 9:57am.

The media is still in denial and I don't think they will ever move on to the next phase. Even if Obama loses in 2012, they might still call the new Republican president "Barak Obama".

Let's make the 2012 campaign: "The War on Error"

I think I can safely say that

Submitted by Reaver on Wed, 01/05/2011 - 11:00am.

I think I can safely say that they will not call the next republican president Barak Obama but the transition from gushing lapdogs to aggressively antagonistic will be instantaneous.

“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.” ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

There's this thing called a

Submitted by Chris Norman on Thu, 01/06/2011 - 12:48am.

There's this thing called a "joke". Some use it to make a point. I just did.

Let's make the 2012 campaign: "The War on Error"

He was effective all right

Submitted by jon_torlin on Wed, 01/05/2011 - 12:23pm.

Oh yeah, there's no denying that Barry Soetoro was very effective. He effected so many things detrimental to this country that I'll be surprised if we can actually recover from it.

He's been effective in diminishing so many things of value that we are just a step or two away from being a third world country economically.

He's been effective in how unemployment is getting worse, having nationalized several industries.

Thanks, Barry! Your communist forefathers would be proud!

-Jon

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