Bozell Column: The Media Built That For Obama

On August 5, Chris Cillizza at The Washington Post announced he was playing with a “somewhat controversial idea” that Mitt Romney should be the favorite to win the presidential election. Debatable, maybe. But controversial? Well, yes. It violates the pro-Obama mandate of our national press corps.

The usual political measures look terrible for Obama, he noted. “The unemployment rate has been over 8 percent for 42 straight months, a streak unparalleled in American history.” Obama must win despite the crippled economy – the most important issue for the voters.

The numbers are political red alerts. The Post’s polling in July showed 44 percent approved of how Obama was dealing with the economy, while 54 percent disapproved, and 41 strongly disapproved of the job he is doing on the economy, while only 21 percent strongly approved. Six in ten said the economy was getting worse, not better, in a Gallup poll.

And now the unthinkable: His campaign is being outmuscled financially. Obama’s team has spent more than $400 million already on his re-election effort, The New York Times estimates, and Team Obama is deeply worried he will be outspent by Mitt Romney and GOP-favoring super PACs in the fall.

So where can Obama find optimism? Cillizza cited the “narrative.”  “From the debate over when Romney totally cut ties to Bain Capital, to the (ongoing) debate over whether he should release more of his tax returns, to the negative press surrounding Romney's trip to Britain, Israel and Poland last week, the narrative of the campaign over the past month has worked heavily in Obama's favor.”

Curiously, Cillizza omits the fact that the dominant narrative writers of the campaign are the national media, our “news” purveyors, working overtime on Obama’s behalf. Reporters pin down the candidate, slap his face, and steal his lunch money, and then go on camera and say it’s sad the candidate had another bad day with his narrative. When Barack Obama was hailed by crowds in Berlin in 2008, the media were thrilled. When Romney traveled to Europe and Israel in 2012, 86 percent of the network news stories were negative, dwelling on supposed gaffes, “diplomatic dust-ups” and foreign “missteps.”

In nearly every interview, reporters are pressing Romney about his tax returns, rolling out the red carpet for anyone who will demand he release them immediately. Can you imagine reporters in 2008 asking Obama repeatedly for his college grades, or about his cocaine use, or Reverend Wright, in interview after interview?

Obama granted five interviews to “60 Minutes” before that election, and was never asked about his record in Illinois, or any of his scandalous associations, from Reverend Wright to Bill Ayers to Tony Rezko (now in prison), who helped him buy his house. Instead, Steve Kroft asked in his first interview “Do you think the country is ready for a black president?” Kroft was still curious in his fifth interview, as they sat down in apparently racism-wracked Nevada: “I know, for a fact, that there are a lot of people out there, there are a lot of people right here in Elko, who won't vote for you because you’re black. I mean, there's not much you can do. But how do you deal with it?”

Ultimately Barack Obama will never be outspent – if you were to calculate the price of the promotional air time provided by the pro-Obama media, and in this cycle, their relentless Romney-bashing. While the networks manufacture gaffes overseas with Romney, real Obama gaffes  – “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that” – are called Republican smears, quotes out of “context.”

In an online analysis, ABC claimed Republicans were basically lying: “Republicans have seized on the line ‘you didn’t build that’ to falsely claim that Obama was speaking directly to business owners about their businesses.” On CBS, morning anchor Charlie Rose complained about Obama being taken out of context, and the network’s political analyst John Dickerson agreed that Obama needed to be defended: “Exactly, and what the President was saying, is it takes a village, essentially.”

When Obama said “Look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own,” he knew whereof he spoke. Everything he’s gained in politics has been granted to him by an adoring news media. Look no further than Steve Kroft beginning his first Obama interview in 2007 by seriously comparing Obama with Abraham Lincoln.

It’s no surprise that many voters have a serious feeling of buyer’s remorse. But our shameless media have no remorse at all for foisting this man on the country, and no capacity for embarrassment that they put him on Mount Rushmore without an accomplishment to his name. It’s too bad America can’t vote to send the media packing. But they can, and should turn off the nightly narratives lamely called a “newscast.”