Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
Barack Obama's die–hard supporters continue to insist that his presidency is a departure from the past.
They've always seemed to be especially eager to draw a distinction between the president and his immediate predecessor.
Maybe, when it is over and it is seen in history's rearview mirror, the Obama administration will prove to be the departure they like to say that it is. But, in one sense, at least, it is not an improvement over the presidency of George W. Bush.
As the Washington Times reports, today is the 215th consecutive day since Obama held a formal, televised prime–time press conference. That, the Times observes, is longer than Bush, who was frequently ridiculed for avoiding press conferences, ever went.
As a reminder, Obama's last such press conference came in July. That was the occasion when he said the Cambridge, Mass., police had "acted stupidly" in their handling of a black Harvard professor who broke into his own home. Things sort of spiraled out of control for Obama on that occasion. In fact, when the story of this administration is written, that may well be remembered as the moment when Obama's health care reform campaign really began to unravel.
To be fair, the Times concedes that Obama has given many interviews to reporters. But those are controlled situations and they are seldom televised live or shown in their entirety on tape. Usually, such interviews get whittled down to a few sound bites that may or may not be an accurate portrayal of the essence of the interview.
Fact is, such sound bites are usually chosen because they fit the amount of time that is available or they best serve whatever the news organization's agenda may be — or because they are controversial (i.e., "I am not a crook" or "I did not have sexual relations with that woman"). That does not necessarily mean they are chosen because they address what voters want to hear.
A prime–time presidential press conference, on the other hand, tends to be a freewheeling, unscripted — at times, uncontrolled — affair, in which a dozen or more reporters, representing a variety of news organizations, are allowed to participate. Viewers can see the whole thing as it happens and, if the president is not asked about something viewers want to hear about, they know it wasn't his fault. He was there, and the reporters had the opportunity to ask him. For whatever reason(s), they did not.
But if the president conducts interviews in a private setting and citizens hear no references to a subject they want to hear about when the sound bites are released, what are they to believe — the president's account or the reporter's?
I suppose, if they have sufficient time available, they can go over the transcript of the interview. But how many citizens will use their spare time to do that? It's the kind of thing they depend upon reporters to do.
I am reminded of Obama's criticism of the press following his "jobs summit" in December.
Obama said he gave several interviews during his trip to Asia in November, but he claimed that no one asked him about the issues, that they asked him about Sarah Palin's book but not the economy.
That was false, as PolitiFact.com observed. PolitiFact.com reviewed the transcripts of the interviews and "found several examples to contradict Obama's statement."
Here's a quick reality check: The unemployment rate was 9.7% when Obama held his last televised press conference. It was 10.6% in January. He can give plenty of lip service to job creation, which he has done, or how many jobs have been "saved" by his policies, but reporters and voters want details. You don't get many details from cherry–picked sound bites.
Here's something else to think about. Even if Obama ends his televised press conference drought today, if he permits another 215 days to pass before he holds another one, it will be late September before he faces the White House press corps in prime time again, and there will be only 5½ weeks left before the midterm elections. Will that be frequently enough to reassure an increasingly skittish public? Will it be adequate to reverse his declining approval numbers?
Tell me, would two prime–time presidential press conferences in 14 months be change you can believe in?
A president who does things behind closed doors is not living up to his pledge to be open and transparent, flowery oratory to the contrary.
Showing posts with label Washington Times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washington Times. Show all posts
Monday, February 22, 2010
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Ready or Not, Here Comes 2010 ...
It's been a mere week since Barack Obama was elected president, but it's been busy.
He and his family paid a courtesy call on the White House. There has been much speculation about who will be chosen for Cabinet posts in the new administration. And Obama apparently wasted little time after winning the election before launching a new web site to communicate with the public.
But if you thought we were finished with campaigning for awhile, you can forget it.
The conservative Washington Times reports that the Dec. 2 runoff for the Senate seat from Georgia is being viewed by prominent politicians and their strategists as the "first race of the 2010 election cycle" — and "an early clue to [Obama's] clout and coattails."
It's still possible that Democrats could achieve the "filibuster-proof" majority of 60 seats in the Senate — that they so clearly desired and openly sought during the regular election campaign — if they also can win a recount in Minnesota and overtake the Republican when all ballots are counted in Alaska.
(The Times incorrectly suggests, by the way, that Alaska is holding a "recount." In fact, as the Anchorage Daily News has been reporting, thousands of ballots have not yet been counted there — although the tabulation of those votes should be completed, the newspaper says, by Wednesday.
(This may seem like a technicality to the Times — but you can't "recount" what hasn't been counted.
(Perhaps that's a subtle difference. Perhaps what the Times should have said — in trying to draw its distinction between what is happening in Alaska and Minnesota and what is happening in Georgia — is that Alaska and Minnesota are counting ballots that have already been cast while Georgia is preparing to hold a whole new election.
(The difference between Alaska and Minnesota is that Alaska is still counting the ballots for the first time. Because the initial outcome was so close in Minnesota, a recount is required by state law.)
Politicians like to draw favorable comparisons to history.
Like an eager lawyer who discovers a long-forgotten ruling that can serve as a precedent — and save a court case that was thought to be a lost cause — a politician who is perceived to be trailing inevitably will invoke the memory of Harry Truman holding up a copy of the Chicago Tribune with the banner headline "Dewey Defeats Truman" — as if to say, "See? My cause isn't hopeless."
But there's a reason why such examples live in the public memory. The dream scenario usually remains in the realm of dreams, rarely venturing into reality.
And Georgia history, as the Times points out, does not have a favorable precedent for Obama or the Democrat in the race, Jim Martin.
Sixteen years ago, when Bill Clinton was elected president and the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, a similar drama was unfolding in Georgia.
In the 1992 general election, three third-party candidates combined for 3% of the vote and prevented both the incumbent, Democrat Wyche Fowler, and his Republican challenger, Paul Coverdell, from receiving a majority of the vote. Then, as now, a runoff was required by state law.
During the runoff, both Clinton and Vice President-elect Al Gore (who, unlike the Obama-Biden ticket, managed to win Georgia in the 1992 presidential race) tried to use their electoral popularity to help Fowler by campaigning for him.
The Times suggests that a "high-profile presence" by the president-elect in the 2008 runoff campaign would be a "potent demonstration of his clout."
But before Obama does so, he might want to review what happened in 1992.
Clinton and Gore's efforts did not succeed. Coverdell received 51% of the vote.
In hindsight, it's hard to say whether there was much that either Clinton or Gore could have done to help Fowler in that race.
As Michael Barone, co-author of the "Almanac of American Politics," observed in the 1994 edition of the book, Fowler "was in trouble because he was seen for what he was, a national liberal on most issues, with strong convictions and great political skills, blessed with a folksy rural manner, but also one of Majority Leader George Mitchell's chief lieutenants."
It didn't play well in Georgia.
Did Fowler's loss foreshadow what was coming in 1994, when Newt Gingrich and the Republicans took control of Capitol Hill? I doubt that. Yes, the Democrats lost a Senate seat in that 1992 runoff, but they lost it in the South, where Democrats have had problems across the board for decades.
And one could argue that things like the 1993 "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military and the 1994 health care reform efforts supported a growing public perception that both the administration and the Democrats in Congress were out of step with average Americans — and laid the foundation for the so-called "Republican Revolution."
Fowler may have sympathized with those policies and others, but they were not factors in the runoff.
A "filibuster-proof" majority was not on the line in 1992 — and it might not be in 2008, either.
It seems likely that, by the time the runoff is held in Georgia on Dec. 2, the final outcomes from Alaska and Minnesota will be known. If either Ted Stevens or Norm Coleman prevail, that 60-seat majority is off the table, no matter what happens in Georgia.
Or, for that matter, what happens with Connecticut independent Joe Lieberman, who has been caucusing with the Democrats for two years but supported John McCain in the presidential campaign — and some Democrats, reportedly, are eager to jettison him and free up the chairmanship of the Homeland Security committee.
There are those in the media, like Ezra Klein in The American Prospect, who openly urge the Democrats to strip Lieberman of his chairmanship.
"[I]t's about to be 2009 and there is no reason to keep an anti-Muslim bigot who believes the United States is being subverted by Muslims from within in charge of a committee that handles national security affairs," writes Klein.
With the domestic and foreign problems confronting the incoming administration, my feeling is that it's best for Obama to avoid becoming personally involved in the Georgia runoff.
Unless that "filibuster-proof" majority appears to be a real possibility, my advice would be to dispatch high-profile surrogates to Georgia — and save the political capital.
He and his family paid a courtesy call on the White House. There has been much speculation about who will be chosen for Cabinet posts in the new administration. And Obama apparently wasted little time after winning the election before launching a new web site to communicate with the public.
But if you thought we were finished with campaigning for awhile, you can forget it.
The conservative Washington Times reports that the Dec. 2 runoff for the Senate seat from Georgia is being viewed by prominent politicians and their strategists as the "first race of the 2010 election cycle" — and "an early clue to [Obama's] clout and coattails."
It's still possible that Democrats could achieve the "filibuster-proof" majority of 60 seats in the Senate — that they so clearly desired and openly sought during the regular election campaign — if they also can win a recount in Minnesota and overtake the Republican when all ballots are counted in Alaska.
(The Times incorrectly suggests, by the way, that Alaska is holding a "recount." In fact, as the Anchorage Daily News has been reporting, thousands of ballots have not yet been counted there — although the tabulation of those votes should be completed, the newspaper says, by Wednesday.
(This may seem like a technicality to the Times — but you can't "recount" what hasn't been counted.
(Perhaps that's a subtle difference. Perhaps what the Times should have said — in trying to draw its distinction between what is happening in Alaska and Minnesota and what is happening in Georgia — is that Alaska and Minnesota are counting ballots that have already been cast while Georgia is preparing to hold a whole new election.
(The difference between Alaska and Minnesota is that Alaska is still counting the ballots for the first time. Because the initial outcome was so close in Minnesota, a recount is required by state law.)
Politicians like to draw favorable comparisons to history.
Like an eager lawyer who discovers a long-forgotten ruling that can serve as a precedent — and save a court case that was thought to be a lost cause — a politician who is perceived to be trailing inevitably will invoke the memory of Harry Truman holding up a copy of the Chicago Tribune with the banner headline "Dewey Defeats Truman" — as if to say, "See? My cause isn't hopeless."
But there's a reason why such examples live in the public memory. The dream scenario usually remains in the realm of dreams, rarely venturing into reality.
And Georgia history, as the Times points out, does not have a favorable precedent for Obama or the Democrat in the race, Jim Martin.
Sixteen years ago, when Bill Clinton was elected president and the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, a similar drama was unfolding in Georgia.
In the 1992 general election, three third-party candidates combined for 3% of the vote and prevented both the incumbent, Democrat Wyche Fowler, and his Republican challenger, Paul Coverdell, from receiving a majority of the vote. Then, as now, a runoff was required by state law.
During the runoff, both Clinton and Vice President-elect Al Gore (who, unlike the Obama-Biden ticket, managed to win Georgia in the 1992 presidential race) tried to use their electoral popularity to help Fowler by campaigning for him.
The Times suggests that a "high-profile presence" by the president-elect in the 2008 runoff campaign would be a "potent demonstration of his clout."
But before Obama does so, he might want to review what happened in 1992.
Clinton and Gore's efforts did not succeed. Coverdell received 51% of the vote.
In hindsight, it's hard to say whether there was much that either Clinton or Gore could have done to help Fowler in that race.
As Michael Barone, co-author of the "Almanac of American Politics," observed in the 1994 edition of the book, Fowler "was in trouble because he was seen for what he was, a national liberal on most issues, with strong convictions and great political skills, blessed with a folksy rural manner, but also one of Majority Leader George Mitchell's chief lieutenants."
It didn't play well in Georgia.
Did Fowler's loss foreshadow what was coming in 1994, when Newt Gingrich and the Republicans took control of Capitol Hill? I doubt that. Yes, the Democrats lost a Senate seat in that 1992 runoff, but they lost it in the South, where Democrats have had problems across the board for decades.
And one could argue that things like the 1993 "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military and the 1994 health care reform efforts supported a growing public perception that both the administration and the Democrats in Congress were out of step with average Americans — and laid the foundation for the so-called "Republican Revolution."
Fowler may have sympathized with those policies and others, but they were not factors in the runoff.
A "filibuster-proof" majority was not on the line in 1992 — and it might not be in 2008, either.
It seems likely that, by the time the runoff is held in Georgia on Dec. 2, the final outcomes from Alaska and Minnesota will be known. If either Ted Stevens or Norm Coleman prevail, that 60-seat majority is off the table, no matter what happens in Georgia.
Or, for that matter, what happens with Connecticut independent Joe Lieberman, who has been caucusing with the Democrats for two years but supported John McCain in the presidential campaign — and some Democrats, reportedly, are eager to jettison him and free up the chairmanship of the Homeland Security committee.
There are those in the media, like Ezra Klein in The American Prospect, who openly urge the Democrats to strip Lieberman of his chairmanship.
"[I]t's about to be 2009 and there is no reason to keep an anti-Muslim bigot who believes the United States is being subverted by Muslims from within in charge of a committee that handles national security affairs," writes Klein.
With the domestic and foreign problems confronting the incoming administration, my feeling is that it's best for Obama to avoid becoming personally involved in the Georgia runoff.
Unless that "filibuster-proof" majority appears to be a real possibility, my advice would be to dispatch high-profile surrogates to Georgia — and save the political capital.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Obama and a Free Press
When I was a journalism student, my professors talked about how important it was to have a free press.
The only way that freedom of the press can flourish, they said, is if it has access to power — even if the person who holds the power wasn't endorsed by the newspaper.
In my experience, the politicians and the newspapers have been mutually respectful, even if they didn't always agree on issues.
Of course, there's always been a certain amount of tension between politicians and members of the media. It was best summed up, I think, in something Thomas Mitchell said to James Stewart in the Frank Capra classic, "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."
In the film, Stewart plays a naïve political novice, appointed to fill the unexpired term of a recently deceased senator. He feels his arrival in Washington was misrepresented by the newspapers, and he goes on a mission to hunt down the reporters and punch each one in the nose.
When he discovers a group of reporters assembled in a local watering hole, he quickly finds himself cornered by them and confronted with their cynical views of government. Mitchell tells him that reporters are the only ones who can afford to tell the truth. "We don't have to be re-elected!"
Relationships between the media and the politicians aren't always ideal. Richard Nixon, for example, used his position to compile a list of his political opponents, mostly members of the press. Legal counsel John Dean left little doubt what the purpose of the list was.
I have no evidence that either Nixon or any of his associates began compiling the enemies list before Nixon became president. (The original list included the managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, Daniel Schorr of CBS and columnist Mary McGrory. The list was constantly revised, but it later included journalists from the New York Times and the Washington Post.)
Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, made an apt observation when the existence of the enemies list was made public. (I don't know the statement word for word, so I'm probably paraphrasing here.) Ford said that any man who has to keep a list of his enemies has too many enemies.
I hope we're not getting indications that such a list is being compiled by the Obama campaign.
Earlier this week, reporters from the New York Post, the Washington Times and the Dallas Morning News were ejected from the Obama campaign bus.
The Washington Times reports today that Obama's campaign insists it ran out of space, for various reasons — and that it wasn't punishing the three newspapers for endorsing John McCain.
You can read what each newspaper said in its endorsement of McCain here:Kirsten Powers, a columnist for the New York Post, calls the action by the Obama camp a "Nixonesque" move.
"This is bipartisanship?" she asks.
I hope that what the Obama campaign says is the truth.
Banning any member of the media from having access to power will bring change, all right.
But if the goal is to punish those who support someone else, it won't be the kind of positive change Obama and his acolytes have been preaching about.
The only way that freedom of the press can flourish, they said, is if it has access to power — even if the person who holds the power wasn't endorsed by the newspaper.
In my experience, the politicians and the newspapers have been mutually respectful, even if they didn't always agree on issues.
Of course, there's always been a certain amount of tension between politicians and members of the media. It was best summed up, I think, in something Thomas Mitchell said to James Stewart in the Frank Capra classic, "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."
In the film, Stewart plays a naïve political novice, appointed to fill the unexpired term of a recently deceased senator. He feels his arrival in Washington was misrepresented by the newspapers, and he goes on a mission to hunt down the reporters and punch each one in the nose.
When he discovers a group of reporters assembled in a local watering hole, he quickly finds himself cornered by them and confronted with their cynical views of government. Mitchell tells him that reporters are the only ones who can afford to tell the truth. "We don't have to be re-elected!"
Relationships between the media and the politicians aren't always ideal. Richard Nixon, for example, used his position to compile a list of his political opponents, mostly members of the press. Legal counsel John Dean left little doubt what the purpose of the list was.
"This memorandum addresses the matter of how we can maximize the fact of our incumbency in dealing with persons known to be active in their opposition to our Administration; stated a bit more bluntly — how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies."
John Dean
I have no evidence that either Nixon or any of his associates began compiling the enemies list before Nixon became president. (The original list included the managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, Daniel Schorr of CBS and columnist Mary McGrory. The list was constantly revised, but it later included journalists from the New York Times and the Washington Post.)
Nixon's successor, Gerald Ford, made an apt observation when the existence of the enemies list was made public. (I don't know the statement word for word, so I'm probably paraphrasing here.) Ford said that any man who has to keep a list of his enemies has too many enemies.
I hope we're not getting indications that such a list is being compiled by the Obama campaign.
Earlier this week, reporters from the New York Post, the Washington Times and the Dallas Morning News were ejected from the Obama campaign bus.
The Washington Times reports today that Obama's campaign insists it ran out of space, for various reasons — and that it wasn't punishing the three newspapers for endorsing John McCain.
You can read what each newspaper said in its endorsement of McCain here:Kirsten Powers, a columnist for the New York Post, calls the action by the Obama camp a "Nixonesque" move.
"This is bipartisanship?" she asks.
I hope that what the Obama campaign says is the truth.
Banning any member of the media from having access to power will bring change, all right.
But if the goal is to punish those who support someone else, it won't be the kind of positive change Obama and his acolytes have been preaching about.
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