David von Drehle

Time magazine's failure to choose the Tea Party as its Person or Persons of the Year surely reflects a desire that they will cease to be significant any day now. David Von Drehle's "runner-up" article in its Person of the Year issue concluded the Tea Party has already peaked and is well on its way to collapse: "The Tea Party is a hot brand, but there's no one in power to enforce the trademark. Now that the bailouts are history and Democratic hegemony is broken, what does it stand for? It's a sign of the incredible velocity of politics these days that the colossus of 2010, a movement not even two years old, is already facing an identity crisis."

Von Drehle tried to compare the Tea Party to Beatlemania -- which is a goofy analogy, considering they were rock's hottest band for six years. But he was wishing and hoping for a breakup:

In a sense, identifying with the Tea Party movement was like catching Beatlemania in the 1960s. People were drawn in for different reasons — the beat, the haircuts, the lyrics — and great gulfs of taste divided the John fans from the Paul fans, the George fans from the Ringo fans.

Here we go again: a liberal journalist feeling Barack Obama's pain, that he would be instantly judged by the media. Wait, the Obama-mythologizing, pinch-me-history-is-happening media? Yes. Time's David Von Drehle wrote an article titled "Obama's Fort Hood Speech: Lost in Translation." Von Drehle compared it to...the Gettysburg Address:

Lincoln was lucky. His speech at Gettysburg wasn't televised, and so he wasn't subjected to hours of commentary in advance of his address, setting expectations, or hours after his speech, analyzing his every word.

No one tried to tease out the difference between his "Commander in Chief moment" and his "pastor-in-chief role," as various TV pundits undertook to do while waiting for President Barack Obama to speak at a memorial service Tuesday for the men and women killed last week in the massacre at Fort Hood. Televised speeches now come larded in so much analysis, before and after, that it becomes almost impossible to connect with them in a genuine, visceral way.

Time magazine is beating its collective breast: we are not the makers of glorious Obama history! We are the blabby pundits that prevent a "genuine, visceral" connection with Obama's eloquence!

David Von Drehle’s marshmallowy cover story celebrating Time Person of the Year Barack Obama was fraught with too much bias for just one post. Here’s a few additional tidbits from the second half of the story, with the emphasis on conservatives. Time thinks Obama’s cabinet picks display a deep emphasis only on what works, not with turf battles and game-playing: " If you've got really smart people who are all focused on the same mission, then usually you can get some things done." Von Drehle was typically enraptured:

Stop and look back at those last few words, because they are a telltale sign of Obama's pragmatism. A persistent question during the campaign -- it became the heart of John McCain's message in the closing weeks -- was whether Obama was some kind of radical, a terrorist-befriending socialist masquerading as Steady Freddy. As he builds his Administration, though, he is emerging as a leader who just wants to "get some things done."

So the Obama years aren’t going to be ultraliberal? Think again.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is "prickly" with the press, particularly Time magazine, reporters for the publication insist on the heels of a recent interview. Yet reporters for the same publication had a decidedly less confrontational chat last week with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), although they did question if he was tough enough to topple McCain in November.

In the August 28 item, "McCain's Prickly TIME Interview," Time editors prefaced the transcript of James Carney and Michael Scherer's interview by lamenting McCain's less frequent engagement of the press as compared to his 2000 Republican primary run. They then insisted that McCain "quickly soured" and refused to "stray off message" during a Time interview:

McCain at first seemed happy enough to do the interview. But his mood quickly soured. The McCain on display in the 24-minute interview was prickly, at times abrasive, and determined not to stray off message.

By contrast, Time editors didn't add prefatory commentary to a relative soft August 20 interview, "Obama on His Veep Thinking" by Karen Tumulty and David von Drehle. That interview began with two questions on Obama's toughness, particularly from the perspective of nervous partisan Democrats: