Media missed the story but voters seem to get it
Jenifer Rubin:
The media is gaga over Barack Obama’s international trip. They fawn, they cheer, and they marvel. But did they miss the big story? It wouldn’t be the first time in this (or a prior) election in which the MSM collectively missed the boat. And this time, it happened largely at the hands of some reporters who gave Obama just enough room to do himself some damage.
As Michael Dukakis’ former campaign manager Susan Estrich observed, “[B]eing the favorite of the press doesn’t necessarily win you votes.” And sometimes they lull you into a state of bliss, unaware that the sheer excess of their infatuation is itself problematic.
There are several legacies of the Obama trip that will linger long after the pictures fade from memory. Unfortunately for him (and his media cheerleaders), none is positive.
First, he put himself, with a bit of help from interviewers Charlie Gibson, Terry Moran, and Katie Couric, in an awful ideological bind. The surge has worked despite Obama’s predictions. Indeed, his trip helped publicize just how startling has been the transition in Iraq from chaos to fledgling democracy. Rather than join the victory celebration he continued to declare his opposition to the surge and bemoan that the money wasn’t used on domestic spending (or alternatively in Afghanistan, where the same enemy lurks and Obama suggests we employ the very same surge concept). Each of the interviewers, to one degree or another, expressed incredulity and frustration. Why wouldn’t he concede the surge had worked and he was wrong? It is, after all, not everyday that a presidential candidate says he still believes we shouldn’t have pursued a path to victory. It would have been as if Thomas Dewey in the 1944 presidential race declared that we never should have attempted D-day.
This will be an ongoing and serious dilemma for Obama. It raises issues of judgment and stubbornness — the very issues on which John McCain has tried to get traction. How will he explain that he’s sorry we made the effort to win in Iraq –or believed we could have miraculously arrived at the same outcome with no military effort? It will not be easy and it raises anew the question as to whether a glib, inexperienced senator appreciates the implications of military defeat — or potential victory. McCain will no doubt make this a central focus of his argument that Obama is unfit to lead.
The second impact of the trip stems from Obama’s mistake in assuming international acclaim and media adoration would impress the folks back home....
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And finally, Obama’s mega-gaffe in snubbing the wounded troops in Germany (with the excuse he wouldn’t want to use campaign funds for such a visit) left even the MSM scratching their heads....
I think the surge gaffe was the biggest and most costly. What it highlights is Obama's willful blindness to reality. Before the surge Democrats accused President Bush of stubbornness. When he changed the strategy they had to come up with another attack, but it is interesting to see them stubbornly stick to a narrative that is completely false when it comes to Iraq.
While I think snubbing the troops was a mistake, I am not sure how it will resonate. If its tied to his willful blindness on Iraq, he will look more and more like a candidate is who out of touch. On top of that he will look like a conman trying to talk his way out of a contradiction.
Rubin is on the money in the media missing the story. They are still hailing the trip and not even aware of why it has bombed back home where Obama is sinking lower in the polls.
Posted by Merv
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