Imagine if any Republican president in the past fifty years had said the following: "I get letters, people say, you are an idiot -- (laughter) -- and here’s what you didn’t do, and here’s the program that is terrible, and all kinds of stuff. But this gentleman, he said, I voted for you twice but I’m deeply disappointed. And it went on and on, chronicling all the things that hadn’t gotten done." The chance that the establishment press would report that constituents had called the president an idiot would be prohibitively high.
President Barack Obama said these very words at a Santa Monica, California fundraiser on Thursday; the White House has posted the transcript here. Yet the Associated Press's Nedra Pickler acted as if he said nothing of the sort in the final three paragraphs of her early Friday report on what Obama said.
First here is the full context of what Obama said on some of his constituents' disappointment (bolds are mine throughout this post):
I got a letter a while back from a gentleman living in Colorado, and clearly an intelligent guy, and he had taken a lot of time to write this letter. And he said, you know, I voted for you twice, but I'm feeling disillusioned. And the good news -- I get 10 letters a day out of the 40,000 and I read those 10 each night. And I’ve given strict instructions to the Correspondence Office I do not just want the nice letters, and they have followed my instructions. (Laughter.) And I get letters, people say, you are an idiot -- (laughter) -- and here’s what you didn’t do, and here’s the program that is terrible, and all kinds of stuff. But this gentleman, he said, I voted for you twice but I’m deeply disappointed. And it went on and on, chronicling all the things that hadn’t gotten done.
And most of what he said I responded to I think pretty effectively -- (laughter) -- because he seemed to have forgotten everything that had happened and how he had benefitted. But the core I think of his concern, the core of his complaint was that he thought that when I got to Washington I could bring people together and make them work more effectively. And the fact of the matter is, is that Washington is still gridlocked and still seems obsessed with the short term and the next election instead of the next generation.
And on that issue, I had to tell him, you’re right. I am frustrated, and you have every right to be frustrated, because Congress doesn’t work the way it should. Issues are left untended. Folks are more interested in scoring political points than getting things done -- not because any individual member of Congress is a bad person -- there are a lot of good, well-meaning, hardworking people out there -- but because the incentives that have been built into the system reward short term, reward a polarized politics, reward being simplistic instead of being true, reward division.
And as mightily as I have struggled against that, I told him, you’re right. It still is broken. But I reminded him that when I ran in 2008, I, in fact, did not say I would fix it; I said we could fix it. I didn’t say, yes, I can; I said -- what?
AUDIENCE: Yes, we can!
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, we can. And so I said to him, if, in fact, you are dissatisfied, then writing a letter to me is nice, but I need you. If you’re dissatisfied that every few months we have a mass shooting in this country, killing innocent people, then I need you to mobilize and organize a constituency that says this is not normal and we are going to change it, and put pressure to elect people who insist on that change. (Applause.)
If you’re concerned about racial polarization in this country, it’s nice to have dialogues around race, but me making a good speech -- and I’ve made some good speeches on the subject -- (laughter) -- that’s not going to solve the problem.
Those who read the final bolded sentence in the excerpt can be forgiven if they believe that the President's ego has grown in direct proportion to his lack of beneficial accomplishment.
Here is what Pickler wrote about Obama's Santa Monica speech:
Obama, at an evening fundraiser in Santa Monica, acknowledged that there was still "so much that's left undone" on his wish-list and that some of his supporters had become disillusioned.
"Sometimes I feel like people forgot the essence of my pledge when I ran for president," he said, reminding the audience that he'd said all along that everyone has to work hard for change - not just the president.
"The good news is we can do it," Obama assured. But he also talked about handing off the baton to another generation, and of progress measured in decades, not months.
The problem isn't only that Pickler didn't bring in Obama's mention of the word "idiot." She also failed to give any indication that any of his supporters are upset in way, shape or form with him, or that Obama himself expressed frustration. Pickler's readers will believe only that his supporters are "disillusioned" with Washington and the political process — but not him — and that Obama isn't succeeding as he wished because there haven't been a sufficiently large number of people involved in making "yes we can" a reality. She even also failed to note his self-expressed "frustration."
All in all, it was just another cleanup exercise at the Administration's Press.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
