Alexander Burns

Martin O’Malley’s One Maryland is a fairy tale, and Politico’s Alexander Burns and Burgess Everett are the Brothers Grimm. 

In another Politico puff piece Burns, aided by “transportation reporter” Everett, uncritically report O’Malley spin as fact.  

Burns and Everett overly indulge and perpetuate O’Malley’s pragmatism fetish.  O’Malley paints himself as a results oriented politician, and the reporters uncritically accept it.

Ohioans can give thanks this week for at least one thing: Former Democratic Governor Ted Strickland has announced that won't be challenging incumbent John Kasich in 2014. During 2008 and 2009, Strickland's second and third years in office, the Buckeye State lost 420,000 jobs and saw its unemployment rate zoom from 5.7 percent to 10.6 percent, performances which were worse than nearly every other state in the union. In his final two years, the state ran billions in deficits which the rest of America covered by providing at least $4.8 billion in "direct relief" stimulus fuding. As he left office, Ohio faced an estimated $8 billion budget deficit and credit agencies downgraded its credit rating.

None of these facts about Ted Strickland's record got into Alexander Burns's Tuesday coverage of Strickland's decision at the Politico. Instead, readers were treated to a narrative which made Strickland's fundamentally deceptive attempt to keep his job in the 2010 election seem almost heroic (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Toledo Blade reporter Tyrel Linkhorn got sucked in by Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne's misleading email to Chrysler employees today. The Politico's Alexander Burns relayed Linkhorn's gullibility to the rest of the nation -- or at least the few people scattered throughout the nation who might bother to read it.

Marchionne, as quoted by Linkhorn told employees that "Jeep assembly lines will remain in operation in the United States and will constitute the backbone of the brand. It is inaccurate to suggest anything different." While that may be true, it doesn't change the fact that the company announced plans to build a new Jeep model in Italy which will be exported to Europe and North America. As Bloomberg reported early this afternoon:

On Monday night, Politico posted two stories with the same theme: Tropical Storm Isaac seriously threatens to ruin the Republican convention and remind voters of Republican incompetence during hurricanes. Does anyone think this outfit is fair and balanced?

In the story “GOP fears ghost of Hurricane Katrina at RNC 2012,” Politico's Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman just keep skipping over the Democratic mayor of New Orleans and the Democratic governor of Louisiana as they predict the most damaging political scenario they can hope for, er, imagine as the storm spared the GOP convention site in Tampa:

"Eleven Democratic state party chairs will announce their support today for a proposed 'freedom to marry' plank in the 2012 Democratic platform," Politico's Alexander Burns reported this morning. Among other high-powered backers of the platform petition is none other than former House Speaker and current Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Yet nowhere in Burns 9-paragraph story did Burns seek comment from the Obama White House about whether the president -- whose 2008 campaign position was that he is "not in favor" of it because marriage is "between a man and a woman" -- takes a stance on the issue of adopting the platform plank. What's more, Burns failed to note that a recent survey shows only 49 percent of African-American voters -- who are among the most loyal of Democratic voters and staunchest Obama backers -- support same-sex marriage. The same survey shows that 42 percent of Catholic voters, a key swing voting bloc, oppose same sex marriage. Thirty-eight percent of political independents also oppose gay marriage.

Politico editor John Harris--known to some for his tendentious questioning during a presidential debate which provoked Newt Gingrich's first of many attacks on liberally biased debate moderators--stepped forward yesterday to proudly proclaim that that it was his idea to create a story questioning the intelligence of the American electorate.

As noted by Tim Graham here at NB, the piece was a perfect recapitulation of the rant made by former ABC anchor Peter Jennings following the 1994 election which saw the first installation of a Republican congress in decades. Instead of accusing his fellow Americans of having a "temper tantrum," Harris simply repeatedly called them "stupid," heavily emphasizing the word on four separate occasions.

Alex Burns of Politico has developed a bad case of Peter Jennings Syndrome, right down to accusing the voters of a "tantrum-like response" directed at Obama on gas prices. So far, he writes, the campaign "has been more like a game of Marco Polo, as a hapless gang of Republican candidates and a damaged, frantic incumbent try to connect with a historically fickle and frustrated electorate."

The voters are a gaggle of Gumps: "And 'fickle' is a nice way of describing the voters of 2012, who appear to be wandering, confused and Forrest Gump-like through the experience of a presidential campaign. It isn’t just unclear which party’s vision they’d rather embrace; it’s entirely questionable whether the great mass of voters has even the most basic grasp of the details – or for that matter, the most elementary factual components – of the national political debate."

Politico's Alexander Burns came out of Wednesday night's debate eager to "correct" Newt Gingrich for whapping CNN moderator John King for asking about contraception yet again (through the device of "hey, I have a question here from the audience.") Gingrich replied: “You did not once in the 2008 campaign, not once did anybody in the elite media ask why Barack Obama voted in favor of legalizing infanticide.”

Burns claimed that was wrong, and found an example (or...actually, he didn't):

Sure, the "full context" of Mitt Romney's comments on liking "being able to fire people who provide services to me" is pretty "benign," Politico's Alexander Burns noted in a Burns & Haberman blog post this morning entitled "Mitt drops the f-bomb," but, "it's hardly careful language from a candidate under fire for participating in large-scale layoffs."

Romney's comment came at a January 9 Chamber of Commerce breakfast in Nashua, N.H., where "He was referring, POLITICO's Reid Epstein says, to being able to hold service providers accountable as an employer."