What if Bush had done that?

[broncofan7]

BINGO. WAKE UP HYPOCRITES.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/200...politico/28764

What if Bush had done that?
Josh Gerstein Josh Gerstein Tue Oct 27, 6:02 am ET

A four-hour stop in New Orleans, on his way to a $3 million fundraiser.

Snubbing the Dalai Lama.

Signing off on a secret deal with drug makers.

Freezing out a TV network.

Doing more fundraisers than the last president. More golf, too.

President Barack Obama has done all of those things — and more.

What’s remarkable is what hasn’t happened. These episodes haven’t become metaphors for Obama’s personal and political character — or consuming controversies that sidetracked the rest of his agenda.

It’s a sign that the media’s echo chamber can be a funny thing, prone to the vagaries of news judgment, and an illustration that, in politics, context is everything.

Conservatives look on with a mix of indignation and amazement and ask: Imagine the fuss if George W. Bush had done these things?

And quickly add, with a hint of jealousy: How does Obama get away with it?

“We have a joke about it. We’re going to start a website: IfBushHadDoneThat.com,” former Bush counselor Ed Gillespie said. “The watchdogs are curled up around his feet, sleeping soundly. ... There are countless examples: some silly, some serious.”

Indeed, Bush got grief for secret meetings with the oil industry, politicizing the White House and spending too much time on his beloved bike. But it’s not just Republicans who notice. Media observers note that the president often gets kid-glove treatment from the press, fellow Democrats and, particularly, interest groups on the left — Bush’s loudest critics, Obama’s biggest backers.

But others say there’s a larger phenomenon at work — in the story line the media wrote about Obama’s presidency. For Bush, the theme was that of a Big Business Republican who rode the family name to the White House, so stories about secret energy meetings and a certain laziness, intellectual and otherwise, fit neatly into the theme, to be replayed over and over again.

Obama’s story line was more positive from the start: historic newcomer coming to shake up Washington. So the negatives that sprung up around Obama — like a sense that he was more flash than substance — track what negative coverage he’s received, captured in a recent “Saturday Night Live” skit that made fun of his lack of accomplishments in office.

“There may well be almost an unconscious effort on the part of the media to give Obama a bit more slack because he is more likable, because he is the first African-American president. That plays into it,” said Sherry Beb**** Jeffe, a political analyst at the University of Southern California.

Democrats find the complaints of Obama “getting a pass” hard to stomach in light of the way the press treated Bush — particularly on the single biggest mistake of his presidency, relying on the faulty intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. Now, Obama’s aides say, the positive coverage simply reflects the fact that their efforts are succeeding.

“As our administration makes progress on the agenda that Washington has ignored for too long, we expect we’ll get some news coverage of that progress that we like and some tough coverage that we don’t,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. “It’s not unlike the New Orleans Saints, who are getting lots of good coverage of their perfect record so far — certainly better coverage than the [2-5] Redskins — but it doesn’t mean the Saints have liked every story that’s been written about them since training camp. It goes with the territory.”

There are signs the friendly tone toward Obama is ebbing. Case in point: a front-page story in The New York Times noting that Obama’s all-male basketball games drew fire from the head of the National Organization for Women, who called the games “troubling.”

But here are other stories in which Obama seems to have gotten a pass:

New Orleans

As a candidate, Obama railed against the Bush administration for abandoning and then neglecting the people of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. He made five campaign trips to the city.

But as president, Obama waited almost nine months before visiting the Big Easy, spent less than four hours on the ground there and then jetted to San Francisco for a $3 million Democratic fundraiser.

“Don’t judge anybody on the amount of time that they’ve spent there. Judge only what this administration promised that they would do, what they’ve done every day and what they’re continuing to work on,” press secretary Robert Gibbs said, pointing to positive reviews of the federal government’s efforts under Obama.

For their part, Democrats can’t see how Bush officials can muster much umbrage over anything related to New Orleans, given how the Republican administration handled the initial response to Katrina.

Managing the press

When the Obama administration moved in recent weeks to isolate and disparage Fox News as a wing of the Republican Party, there were few immediate howls of outrage — even from Fox’s fellow journalists in the media.

Press defenders and First Amendment advocates who jumped on the Bush administration for using military analysts to shape war coverage reacted with a yawn to the White House’s announcement that it had deemed Fox to be not a “legitimate news organization.”

“Had I said about MSNBC what the Obama White House said about Fox, the media uproar would still be going on,” said Ari Fleischer, who served as Bush’s press secretary until 2003. “I instinctively would have known ... the media would have leapt to their feet to defend them. I’m shocked it’s not happening now.”

One press veteran agreed. “If George Bush had taken on MSNBC, what would have happened?” said Phil Bronstein, editor-at-large of the San Francisco Chronicle. “That’s one place you can point to a real difference in how I’d imagine Bush would be treated.”

Politicizing the White House

Throughout the Bush administration, liberal critics warned that the hand of Bush political adviser Karl Rove was spreading politics into all corners of government. Reporters were on alert for any sign that politics was infecting the work of federal agencies. One top appointee got in hot water for allegedly asking agency officials to work to “help our candidates” across the country.

So some Bush aides went nearly apoplectic earlier this month when they spotted Gibbs and Obama’s political guru, David Axelrod, in photos of a Situation Room meeting on Afghanistan policy.

“Oh, the howling and screaming that would have happened if Karl Rove was sitting in on even a deputies-level meeting where strategy was being hammered out. People would have just gone ballistic,” said Peter Feaver, a former White House aide for both Bush and Bill Clinton.

Also, in about nine months, Obama has already attended more than two dozen fundraising events, while Bush did only six in his first year in office, according to a tally by CBS’s Mark Knoller.

Gibbs said Obama had to do more to raise a similar amount of money, since the kinds of soft-money fundraisers Bush did early on were banned. “This president ... doesn’t accept money from PACs or lobbyists and doesn’t allow lobbyists to give at fundraisers that he’s at, as well,” Gibbs added.

Dealing with business, in secret

Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney endured years of criticism and lawsuits that stretched all the way to the Supreme Court over secret meetings Cheney’s Energy Task Force held with oil and gas companies. When the policy emerged, critics said Cheney was carrying water for the industry.

Obama pledged to hash out health care reform live on C-SPAN and excoriated Bush for kowtowing to the drug industry. But aides signed off on the drug industry’s agreement to find $80 billion in savings to support reform. However, Obama aides didn’t disclose that the agreement involved the White House promising that current health legislation wouldn’t include further cuts or give the government the right to negotiate over drug prices.

Toning down human rights

During the campaign, Obama talked tough on China. While candidate Obama pushed Bush to take a hard line, President Obama hasn’t. Hoping to win China’s help on Iran and North Korea, Obama skipped a meeting with the Dalai Lama and said little when China undertook a violent crackdown in its largely Muslim Xinjiang region. The White House has pledged to meet with the Dalai Lama later.

And while candidate Obama warned Bush against a “reckless and cynical initiative [that] would reward a regime in Khartoum that has a record of failing to live up to its commitments,” President Obama’s envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, seemed to lay out a similar incentive-driven approach.

“We’ve got to think about giving out cookies,” said Gration. “Kids, countries — they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.” The White House backed away from Gration’s characterization of the strategy but did recently lay out a strategy of engaging with the Sudanese regime.

Traveling and recreating

In his campaign and as president, Bush was mocked for a lack of interest in all things foreign — seven minutes touring the Kremlin, 25 minutes at the Great Wall of China, before declaring, “Let’s go home.”

During a trip to Europe in June, Obama chastised German and French reporters for suggesting that he was snubbing those countries by making only brief stops in each. “There are only 24 hours in the day. And so there’s nothing to any of that speculation beyond us just trying to fit in what we could do on such a short trip,” he told reporters in Germany.

But after taking his wife out for an attention-grabbing date night, Obama promptly jetted back to Washington. Within about 90 minutes of arriving at the White House, the tightly scheduled president was on the move again — headed to Andrews Air Force Base to play nine holes of golf.

[DBruleU]

This will fall on deaf ears here.

[Rohirrim]

That's funny. I was watching Chris Matthews yesterday on MSNBC and he had a panel on blasting Obama for playing golf and attending fund-raisers. I know you righties just do this from your obeisance to your ideology so you don't actually see what is going on, but Obama is getting major heat from the Left. Probably more than he gets from the right, which tends to be simply knee jerk b****ing and moaning. Obama is spending too much time in bed with Wall Street, hasn't resurrected Glass-Steagle, is lukewarm on the public option at best, and with Sumners and Geitner behind him, seems to think that whatever the banks want is okay by him. He's starting to look downright lackadaisacal.

[ak1971]

Bush sucks.

[barryr]

Oh, the lefties would have been so understanding if Bush had even done half of those things. Much of the media has decided not much of those things is worth reporting, but would they have ignored them if Bush was the one doing them? What was it Obama said about being transparent? Somehow much of the media is ignoring that promise he made too. Couldn't be since most of them voted and supported him. Nah. The liberals in the media are way too objective and much more so than that nasty Fox News.

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by ak1971

Bush sucks.

Now he is on a promotional tour, going out motivating people. His first announcement was, "Gee! My life has sure changed!"

No ****, Sherlock.

[TexanBob]

Obama’s aides say, the positive coverage simply reflects the fact that their efforts are succeeding.

Indeed. They are crushing the economy, doubling the unemployment rolls, capitulating to every tinpot dictator across the globe while high-fiving and fist-bumping all of America's enemies, expanding the reach of government into everything from what type of car you can buy to what type of light bulb you can have, sabotaging our war effort, sabotaging the U.S. dollar and making as many of us wards of the state as they possibly can. They have been incredibly successful about all of this with the media's fawning approval.

The only reason the Left is upset with him is he hasn't pushed the country to communism fast enough to suit them.

[epicSocialism4tw]

Obama has done nothing outside of comtinue to campaign for office.

He must be campaigning for the UN, because at this rate he doesnt stand a chance for re-election.

[watermock]

“As our administration makes progress on the agenda that Washington has ignored for too long, we expect we’ll get some news coverage of that progress that we like and some tough coverage that we don’t,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. “It’s not unlike the New Orleans Saints, who are getting lots of good coverage of their perfect record so far — certainly better coverage than the [2-5] Redskins — but it doesn’t mean the Saints have liked every story that’s been written about them since training camp. It goes with the territory.”

Oh boy, that explains it...

[Bronco Bob]

What is Bush had gone to Dover to pay respect to fallen American servicemen?

[epicSocialism4tw]

Originally Posted by Bronco Bob

What is Bush had gone to Dover to pay respect to fallen American servicemen?

That was a sick publicity ploy.

Obama is a media whore and just whored out our dead soldiers' private moments for some camera face time.

Did you know that before this happened that Obama lifted the media ban from these closed, personal military events?

Obama is a sick scumbag.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by broncofan7

What if Bush had done that?

Then folks like you and your pet chimp DBruleU would be bending over backwards trying to defend him - just like most of you did for eight years.

Been there - seen that.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by broncofan7

What if Bush had done that?

Then anyone who objected would be castigated by right-wing pinheads as a traitor who hates America and wants the country to fail.

[Rigs11]

Originally Posted by McSkillet

That was a sick publicity ploy.

Obama is a media whore and just whored out our dead soldiers' private moments for some camera face time.

Did you know that before this happened that Obama lifted the media ban from these closed, personal military events?

Obama is a sick scumbag.

Yeah when Dumbya goes on an aircraft carrier and declares Mission accomplished and then taunts the same people whose country he invaded by saying "bring em on" than he is a patriot right?Jackass..

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Gotta chuckle when the same people who winked at (or outright defended) eight years of rampant, almost unprecedented Bush/Republican corruption, criminality, scandal, and incompetence start threads like this one.

If these people had the brains or the sense of shame God gave a fruit fly, they'd still be on their knees repenting for those eight years.

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by McSkillet

That was a sick publicity ploy.

Obama is a media whore and just whored out our dead soldiers' private moments for some camera face time.

Did you know that before this happened that Obama lifted the media ban from these closed, personal military events?

Obama is a sick scumbag.

Perhaps it is you who is the sick scumbag? Obama changed the "Hide the truth from the American people" edict that Bush had in effect, and changed it to allowing the families of the fallen to decide, as they did when the president went to greet those planes. Eleven families opted out. The rest didn't.

Of course, with you, the mouth goes off before the brain ever gets into gear. That's assuming there is a brain. There certainly isn't any class.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

[TDmvp]

[epicSocialism4tw]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

Perhaps it is you who is the sick scumbag? Obama changed the "Hide the truth from the American people" edict that Bush had in effect, and changed it to allowing the families of the fallen to decide, as they did when the president went to greet those planes. Eleven families opted out. The rest didn't.

Of course, with you, the mouth goes off before the brain ever gets into gear. That's assuming there is a brain. There certainly isn't any class.

Hide the truth? You are irreparably out of touch. Its quite telling that most of the soldiers' families denied Obama the right to have his picture taken as a campaign photo op with their fallen sons.

Obama is a constantly-campaigning media whore, and you are a clown for buying into what he is selling.

Obama is a classless rube who is fast becoming an embarrassment to our country.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by McSkillet

Obama is a classless rube who is fast becoming an embarrassment to our country.

This from a guy who carried water for Bush for eight years?

Classic!

[epicSocialism4tw]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

This from a guy who carried water for Bush for eight years?

Classic!

"carried water for Bush for eight years"...



What?

Yet another example of how you have no recollection of the opinions of anyone in this forum other than your propaganda party-line spam cohort Gaffney, whom you agree with regarding just about every nazi idea that gets vomited into this space.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by McSkillet

"carried water for Bush for eight years"...



What?

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by McSkillet

Yet another example of how you have no recollection of the opinions of anyone in this forum other than your propaganda party-line spam cohort Gaffney, whom you agree with regarding just about every nazi idea that gets vomited into this space.

"Nazi?"

I thought we were "socialists?"

Make up your mind!

[epicSocialism4tw]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

"Nazi?"

I thought we were "socialists?"

Make up your mind!

I guess you miss the subtle things...like Gaffney's raging case of anti-semitic racism.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by McSkillet

I guess you miss the subtle things...like Gaffney's raging case of anti-semitic racism.

Um, no.

Ever the master of irony and projection, you miss subtle things like the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.