The Audacity of Humility
Does Barack Obama have any? Does it matter?
Katherine Ernst
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon1028ke.html

The late Tim Russert once described his role on the venerable Meet the Press thus: “I view it very much as a national treasure, and I am the temporary custodian and try to take care of it, and hopefully pass it off in good shape one day.” That might be a healthy credo for a United States president to apply to his office, too. Sure, “custodian” may belie the presidency’s potential to alter the course of history in ways that are terribly profound: imagine a post–Stephen Douglas nation. But the word “temporary” is apt. The Founding Fathers’ insistence on making the presidency a term-limited and duly checked office, no matter how wonderful the guy at the top was, wasn’t just a nifty way to stave off monarchy but a way to make clear that the power was truly with the people: “Hey, Mr. President, you’re out in eight years—maybe four—but we’ll keep voting for your replacement and your replacement’s replacement till we die.” (The Constitution did not limit presidents to two terms until 1951, when the 22nd Amendment was ratified. Until then, the limits were customary rather than constitutional.)

So a president who understands that the exclusive Leaders of the Free World Club is powerful yet ultimately limited, prestigious yet not of his own making, is a leader who understands that the majority of his countrymen placed confidence in him to “pass” America “off in good shape one day,” not to spend his time trying personally to mold it and ensure that his beautiful mug kicks Washington’s off the $1 bill. Call me a biased cynic, but candidate Barack Obama doesn’t seem to understand that; or if he does, he seems nevertheless to indulge in a disturbing amount of cult-of-personality marketing and self-celebration that far exceeds historical norms—even for an office that, by definition, demands a lot of ego. It’s as if he doesn’t need to campaign for your vote because he’s already president.

We had, of course, the aborted self-made presidential seal. We still have the “O-Force One” plane, with OBAMA ’08 embroidered on the candidate’s seat with the word PRESIDENT immediately beneath it. We also had the candidate’s nonpolitical—wink, wink—summertime stroll through Berlin. A senior foreign policy advisor of Obama’s told reporters at the time, “It is not going to be a political speech. . . . When the president of the United States goes and gives a speech, it is not a political speech or a political rally.” Indeed, the Berlin speech was hyped with campaign-produced hagiographic artwork, which looked like a Mao-sanctioned Kraftwerk concert poster with just a sprinkling of American patriotism—the red, white, and blue color scheme—on top. And let’s not forget that at the Democratic National Convention, Denver’s Pepsi Center was good enough for an actual former president, his wife, and the ailing lion of the Senate and Democratic Party, Ted Kennedy, but not for Obama. He demanded another stage, something bigger and better, with fireworks, Greek columns, and 80,000 adoring fans.

It’s Obama’s rhetoric that is most telling in this light, especially compared with that of his Republican opponents, Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin. Palin is far and away the most humble candidate; she rarely speaks of herself as the sitting vice president, but rather disclaims nearly all her hypothetical statements with some form of “If we are so fortunate to serve”—or “privileged,” or “blessed.” The sentiment seems genuine, as did McCain’s during his closing statement of the last presidential debate: serving America, he said, was “the great honor of my life, and I’ve been proud to serve. And I hope you’ll give me an opportunity to serve again. I’d be honored and humbled.”

Such phrases are MIA from Obama transcripts. In fact, he drops the “when I’m president” line so often that his electoral win might as well be a foregone conclusion. (As it is, the New York Times reports that former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta is already whipping up Obama’s inaugural address.) Typical Obama speeches include lines like this, uttered during his first debate with McCain: “I reserve the right, as president of the United States, to meet with anybody at a time and place of my choosing if I think it’s going to keep America safe.” The contrast between Obama’s electoral certainty and McCain’s and Palin’s humility (whether concerted or authentic) is undeniable and striking.

Big deal, you might say. Pre-election cockiness or humility cannot accurately predict effective leadership. Perhaps. But like Obama’s long line of admitted radical influences, associations, and alliances (from Frank Marshall Davis to Reverend Wright to Bill Ayers to Rashid Khalidi), Obama’s consistent overconfident belief in the power of Obama is troubling. It’s troubling because that focus on the self, has, in fact, shelved political and social advancement for Obama’s own gain time and again. Let’s take his famous “community organizing” days in Chicago. Obama, by his own admission, left the job out of frustration after continually hitting brick walls. Fine. But, said a former organizing coworker of his, Mike Kruglik, to reporter Byron York of National Review: “He was constantly thinking about his path to significance and power. . . . He said, ‘I need to go there [Harvard Law School] to find out more about power. How do powerful people think? What kind of networks do they have? How do they connect to each other?’”

And so, some years later, elected politico Obama surfaced in the Illinois state senate. In 2000, when he ran unsuccessfully for Bobby Rush’s congressional seat, it became clear that he had his heart set on the center of national power—Washington. Four years later, of course, he got there as a senator from Illinois. But how has Senator Obama served his Illinois constituents? Poorly, in that they voted for a complete term. Here’s Obama in his own words to the Chicago Sun-Times on November 4, 2004: “I was elected yesterday. . . . I have never set foot in the U.S. Senate. I’ve never worked in Washington. And the notion that somehow I’m immediately going to start running for higher office just doesn’t make sense. So look, I can unequivocally say I will not be running for national office in four years, and my entire focus is making sure that I’m the best possible senator on behalf of the people of Illinois. . . . I am not running for president in 2008.” Oops. Within two years, that promise gave way to personal aspirations; Obama has, in fact, spent more time running for a higher office than serving in his current one.

If his track record is shortchanging constituents for personal advancement, what’s to say a President Obama would behave differently? Of course, a President Obama can’t run for higher office, but ego can make a man do funny things. Already, he believes that the force of his own personality is strong enough to garner concessions from the world’s worst dictators—Ahmadinejad, Chávez, Kim Jong Il—dictators with proud histories of playing international watchdogs and diplomats for fools. Gee, what could go wrong there?

By the way, note that when Obama did once profess “humility and knowledge of my own limitations” after his Iowa caucus win, he then followed the sentiment up with the belief that his presidency would mark “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” We all know that totalitarians and tyrants tend to use the same kind of messianic language, if not delivery. A President Obama would be neither a totalitarian nor a tyrant, of course. But it’s no coincidence that a candidate advocating a strong, large, and very left-wing centralized government sounds so imperious.

It’s up to the electorate to decide whether Obama’s hyperliberal ideology and furious ego will make a toxic soup. But as we await the election, let’s chew on a favorite quotation of his polar opposite, Ronald Reagan: “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.” Obama is certainly hungry for credit, adoration, and power; anathema to what the Founders had in mind for a president when they wrote Article II of the Constitution. If there is an Obama presidency, expect limits—lots of them.


Media's Presidential Bias and Decline
Slanted Election Coverage and the Reasons Why
MICHAEL S. MALONE
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Story?id=6099188&page=1

The traditional media are playing a very, very dangerous game -- with their readers, with the Constitution and with their own fates.

The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I've found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I've begun -- for the first time in my adult life -- to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was "a writer," because I couldn't bring myself to admit to a stranger that I'm a journalist.

You need to understand how painful this is for me. I am one of those people who truly bleeds ink when I'm cut. I am a fourth-generation newspaperman. As family history tells it, my great-grandfather was a newspaper editor in Abilene, Kan., during the last of the cowboy days, then moved to Oregon to help start the Oregon Journal (now the Oregonian).

My hard-living -- and when I knew her, scary -- grandmother was one of the first women reporters for the Los Angeles Times. And my father, though profoundly dyslexic, followed a long career in intelligence to finish his life (thanks to word processors and spellcheckers) as a very successful freelance writer. I've spent 30 years in every part of journalism, from beat reporter to magazine editor. And my oldest son, following in the family business, so to speak, earned his first national byline before he earned his drivers license.

So, when I say I'm deeply ashamed right now to be called a "journalist," you can imagine just how deep that cuts into my soul.

Now, of course, there's always been bias in the media. Human beings are biased, so the work they do, including reporting, is inevitably colored. Hell, I can show you 10 different ways to color variations of the word "said" -- muttered, shouted, announced, reluctantly replied, responded, etc. -- to influence the way a reader will comprehend exactly the same quote. We all learn that in Reporting 101, or at least in the first few weeks working in a newsroom.

But what we are also supposed to learn during that same apprenticeship is to recognize the dangerous power of that technique, and many others, and develop built-in alarms against them.

But even more important, we are also supposed to be taught that even though there is no such thing as pure, Platonic objectivity in reporting, we are to spend our careers struggling to approach that ideal as closely as possible.

That means constantly challenging our own prejudices, systematically presenting opposing views and never, ever burying stories that contradict our own world views or challenge people or institutions we admire. If we can't achieve Olympian detachment, than at least we can recognize human frailty -- especially in ourselves.

Reporting Bias

For many years, spotting bias in reporting was a little parlor game of mine, watching TV news or reading a newspaper article and spotting how the reporter had inserted, often unconsciously, his or her own preconceptions. But I always wrote it off as bad judgment and lack of professionalism, rather than bad faith and conscious advocacy.

Sure, being a child of the '60s I saw a lot of subjective "New" Journalism, and did a fair amount of it myself, but that kind of writing, like columns and editorials, was supposed to be segregated from "real" reporting, and, at least in mainstream media, usually was. The same was true for the emerging blogosphere, which by its very nature was opinionated and biased.

But my complacent faith in my peers first began to be shaken when some of the most admired journalists in the country were exposed as plagiarists, or worse, accused of making up stories from whole cloth.

I'd spent my entire professional career scrupulously pounding out endless dreary footnotes and double-checking sources to make sure that I never got accused of lying or stealing someone else's work -- not out of any native honesty, but out of fear: I'd always been told to fake or steal a story was a firing offense … indeed, it meant being blackballed out of the profession.

And yet, few of those worthies ever seemed to get fired for their crimes -- and if they did they were soon rehired into even more prestigious jobs. It seemed as if there were two sets of rules: one for us workaday journalists toiling out in the sticks, and another for folks who'd managed, through talent or deceit, to make it to the national level.

Meanwhile, I watched with disbelief as the nation's leading newspapers, many of whom I'd written for in the past, slowly let opinion pieces creep into the news section, and from there onto the front page. Personal opinions and comments that, had they appeared in my stories in 1979, would have gotten my butt kicked by the nearest copy editor, were now standard operating procedure at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and soon after in almost every small town paper in the U.S.

But what really shattered my faith -- and I know the day and place where it happened -- was the war in Lebanon three summers ago. The hotel I was staying at in Windhoek, Namibia, only carried CNN, a network I'd already learned to approach with skepticism. But this was CNN International, which is even worse.

I sat there, first with my jaw hanging down, then actually shouting at the TV, as one field reporter after another reported the carnage of the Israeli attacks on Beirut, with almost no corresponding coverage of the Hezbollah missiles raining down on northern Israel. The reporting was so utterly and shamelessly biased that I sat there for hours watching, assuming that eventually CNNi would get around to telling the rest of the story … but it never happened.

The Presidential Campaign

But nothing, nothing I've seen has matched the media bias on display in the current presidential campaign.

Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass -- no, make that shameless support -- they've gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don't have a free and fair press.

I was one of the first people in the traditional media to call for the firing of Dan Rather -- not because of his phony story, but because he refused to admit his mistake -- but, bless him, even Gunga Dan thinks the media is one-sided in this election.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those people who think the media has been too hard on, say, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin, by rushing reportorial SWAT teams to her home state of Alaska to rifle through her garbage. This is the big leagues, and if she wants to suit up and take the field, then Gov. Palin better be ready to play.

The few instances where I think the press has gone too far -- such as the Times reporter talking to prospective first lady Cindy McCain's daughter's MySpace friends -- can easily be solved with a few newsroom smackdowns and temporary repostings to the Omaha bureau.

No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side -- or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del.

If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.

That isn't Sen. Obama's fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media's fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.

Why, for example to quote the lawyer for Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., haven't we seen an interview with Sen. Obama's grad school drug dealer -- when we know all about Mrs. McCain's addiction? Are Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko that hard to interview? All those phony voter registrations that hard to scrutinize? And why are Sen. Biden's endless gaffes almost always covered up, or rationalized, by the traditional media?

Joe the Plumber

The absolute nadir (though I hate to commit to that, as we still have two weeks before the election) came with Joe the Plumber.

Middle America, even when they didn't agree with Joe, looked on in horror as the press took apart the private life of an average person who had the temerity to ask a tough question of a presidential candidate. So much for the standing up for the little man. So much for speaking truth to power. So much for comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, and all of those other catchphrases we journalists used to believe we lived by.

I learned a long time ago that when people or institutions begin to behave in a matter that seems to be entirely against their own interests, it's because we don't understand what their motives really are. It would seem that by so exposing their biases and betting everything on one candidate over another, the traditional media is trying to commit suicide -- especially when, given our currently volatile world and economy, the chances of a successful Obama presidency, indeed any presidency, is probably less than 50/50.

Furthermore, I also happen to believe that most reporters, whatever their political bias, are human torpedoes … and, had they been unleashed, would have raced in and roughed up the Obama campaign as much as they did McCain's. That's what reporters do. I was proud to have been one, and I'm still drawn to a good story, any good story, like a shark to blood in the water.

So why weren't those legions of hungry reporters set loose on the Obama campaign? Who are the real villains in this story of mainstream media betrayal?

The editors. The men and women you don't see; the people who not only decide what goes in the paper, but what doesn't; the managers who give the reporters their assignments and lay out the editorial pages. They are the real culprits.

Bad Editors

Why? I think I know, because had my life taken a different path, I could have been one: Picture yourself in your 50s in a job where you've spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the cockpit of power … only to discover that you're presiding over a dying industry. The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent. Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared. Your job doesn't have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you'll lose your job before you cross that finish line, 10 years hence, of retirement and a pension.

In other words, you are facing career catastrophe -- and desperate times call for desperate measures. Even if you have to risk everything on a single Hail Mary play. Even if you have to compromise the principles that got you here. After all, newspapers and network news are doomed anyway -- all that counts is keeping them on life support until you can retire.

And then the opportunity presents itself -- an attractive young candidate whose politics likely matches yours, but more important, he offers the prospect of a transformed Washington with the power to fix everything that has gone wrong in your career.

With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived fairness doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.

And besides, you tell yourself, it's all for the good of the country …

This is the opinion of the columnist and in no way reflects the opinion of ABC News.

Michael S. Malone is one of the nation's best-known technology writers. He has covered Silicon Valley and high-tech for more than 25 years, beginning with the San Jose Mercury News as the nation's first daily high-tech reporter. His articles and editorials have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Fortune, and for two years he was a columnist for The New York Times. He was editor of Forbes ASAP, the world's largest-circulation business-tech magazine, at the height of the dot-com boom. Malone is the author or co-author of a dozen books, notably the best-selling "Virtual Corporation." Malone has also hosted three public television interview series, and most recently co-produced the celebrated PBS miniseries on social entrepreneurs, "The New Heroes." He has been the ABCNews.com "Silicon Insider" columnist since 2000.


Ten Reasons Why McCain Could Still Win
Despite the media drumbeat reporting on McCain's certain defeat, perhaps it's best if we let the voters have the final say
by Jennifer Rubin
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/ten-reasons-why-mccain-could-still-win/

The media is telling voters, especially Republican voters, that the presidential race is over. The handwriting is on the wall. The fat lady is singing. Don’t even bother to vote.

But wait, isn’t there an election next week? After all this, don’t voters have a choice?

Well, the MSM would like us to believe that no, a threshold has been crossed and Barack Obama already has those electoral votes. Not quite, though. Not yet.

Sure, there is less than a week to go and, as of this writing, there is not a single national poll showing John McCain in the lead. But the race isn’t over. And there are some pretty good reasons, ten that come to mind actually, as to why the contest is not a foregone conclusion.

First, the daily tracking polls are tightening. You see lots more “4s” and “5s” and many fewer “8s,” “9s,” and “10s.” That means voters aren’t yet fixed on a choice. It also means Obama hasn’t closed the sale.

Second, some polls show that seven to ten percent of the voters are still undecided. Even Obama partisans (like the MSNBC analysts) concede that the vast majority of these voters could well be McCain supporters, or at least “No-Bama” voters. If Obama is below 50% going into the election, that may signal a late breaking surge for McCain, much the same way Al Gore in 2000 enjoyed a final weekend tilt (largely because of breaking news about George W. Bush’s past DUI).

Third, no one really has a clue as to who is going to show up to vote. Gallup threw in the towel and has three turnout models. If those college kids all turn out it may be a short and sad evening for McCain. But if they decide to go partying instead, and/or if Sarah Palin has tapped into the conservative base (like Bush did in 2004) it will be a long and hopeful night for McCain.

Fourth, Joe the Plumber and Barack the Radio Show Guest gave McCain his strongest argument, or rather proof for his argument, that Obama is an ultra-liberal bent on redistributing the wealth, not creating it. Barney Frank did his part too, hinting at a big tax hike to come. In fact he’s so bent on his “fairness” scheme, he’ll even try it in a recession. That’s the best argument yet as to why, of all times, now is not the moment for a very liberal Democrat in the White House.

Fifth, Joe Biden did his best to scare the dickens out of his own donors and became fodder for a Saturday Night Live skit when he warned Obama would be tested by an international crisis and wouldn’t be likely to pass the test. So much for the Colin Powell seal of national security approval. (That Ted Stevens jury didn’t think much of Powell’s character assessment skills, by the way.) Even French President Nicholas Sarkozy chimed in, dubbing Obama’s Iran policy “utterly immature.”

Sixth, Sarah Palin is going “rogue” — telling off her handlers, talking to the media, and making the case before tens of thousands of cheering fans. No, Peggy Noonan doesn’t like her and David Frum is appalled, but thankfully for McCain their barbs have likely only endeared her further to the conservative base.

Seventh, Americans have pretty much figured out that one way or another, Bush is leaving office. They don’t need to vote for Obama to see Bush go. And McCain has done a good a job as possible explaining how he agrees that the last eight years have been a bust (economic and otherwise). In short, the “McCain=Bush” pitch is wearing thin.

Eighth, the stories of the ACORN voter registration scandal and the “thugocracy” of the Obama camp have percolated up through the blogosphere and talk radio and into MSM coverage. If the Obama camp is acting that way now — even going after Joe the Plumber — what will it be like with the full power of the federal government behind them? Suddenly the “Chicago Way” sounds a bit ominous.

Ninth, voters have figured out that an Obama presidency would mean an end to divided government. That realization caused Nancy Pelosi to go on the defensive with the bizarre claim that Democrats would be more bipartisan if they won everything. No, really. They promise.

Tenth, John McCain may not be raising the issue, but Reverend Wright is back in independent ads. Voters are getting one last reminder that for twenty years Barack Obama had the closest of relationships with Wright and sought inspiration and political support from the hate-spewing pastor. That message resonates with some segment of voters who simply can’t understand how Obama would tolerate, let alone embrace, such a figure. (And they aren’t buying that Obama was ignorant as to Wright’s real views.)

So we’re being told that it’s over. And McCain certainly has his work cut out for him. But voters always get the last say. Come to think of it, that’s probably why the media is so anxious to tell us that this one is in the bag.