At the Washington Examiner, Chris Stirewalt writes, “The Thrill Is Gone For Obama And The Media”:
Some are still in the tank for Obama. But many liberal reporters think the president is blowing the Left’s big chance.
In talking about how everything got so “wee-weed up,” Obama observed that in August of 2008 the media predicted doom because John McCain began to close the gap after picking Sarah Palin.
In trying to explain that the president was talking about media incontinence, Gibbs referred to August and September of 2007, when most predicted Hillary Clinton would roll to victory in Iowa.
So not only are Obama and his people still reliving the campaign, they’re drawing the wrong lessons from it.
At this point in 2007, Obama was coming up in the polls, making Iowa a three-way race with Clinton and John Edwards. Now, the president’s numbers are sinking.
And if the trend line in the late summer of 2008 had held, Obama would have lost. It took a tsunami of bad economic news and the McCain campaign’s mishandling of it to put Obama back on top.
But there is no opponent here other than public opinion and no finish line other than the end of his term.
With only the steady breeze of favorable coverage of a typical Democratic president instead of the gale of positive press that once helped drive Obama to victory, it’s going to be a very long journey.
Still, look on the bright side: As Michael Barone presciently noted back in March, for a guy who presented himself as being on the leading edge of technology, Obama’s policies trap him squarely in the mid-2oth century: FDR and LBJ’s leviathan New Deal and Great Society, the socialized medicine of post-war Britain, and the late-1960s Radical Chic of Saul Alinsky and Bill Ayers. At least now he’s merely nostalgic for the glory days of 2008, not 1938 through 1968.
Related: Jennifer Rubin asks, “What Happened to Candidate Obama?” Why, it’s like the man has never governed before! (Err, wait a second…)
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