Thoughts & Commentary on the Obama Administration

[Xiahou]

Reagan.

Do you have any data supporting that? The Pew Study only goes back as far as Clinton. If you have something else, I'd like to see it.

Please Xiahou, I know you are smart enough give me a legitimate argument on why Obama is so far a failure. There is so much you can choose from without bringing up this media blame game again.

If I remember correctly, the counter to Republican complaining about Bush's media coverage was that the press is always adversarial. So far, the Obama administration has bucked that trend.


I'd be much happier if Obama did have an intellectually curious media that was willing to ask probing questions instead of heaping praise on Michelle's fashion sense or writing dozens of articles about the Obama's date night.

The author of the second story I linked, Robert J. Samuelson, is no partisan hack either. Maybe you should give the article another look before dismissing it.

Are his proposals practical, even if desirable? Maybe they're neither? What might be the unintended consequences? All "reforms" do not succeed; some cause more problems than they solve. Johnson's economic policies, inherited from Kennedy, proved disastrous; they led to the 1970s' "stagflation." The "war on poverty" failed. The press should not be hostile, but it ought to be skeptical.

Mostly, it isn't. The idea of a "critical" Obama story is one about a tactical conflict with congressional Democrats or criticism from an important constituency. Larger issues are minimized, despite ample grounds for skepticism.