All Obama All The Time by Tim Siggia

All Obama All The Time

By Tim Siggia

July 25, 2008

"Mikhail Gorbachev, Lenin, and Stalin never got this kind of coverage from their media -- and they owned it!" -- Rush Limbaugh, July 22, 2008

What do Barack Obama, the Clintons, and the GEICO Gecko have in common? Easy answer: Overexposure to the point of nausea. There are subtle differences among the three, of course. In the case of the obnoxious lizard with the phony Australian accent, his overexposure is paid for by the world's richest man, Warren Buffett, whose pockets these days seem bottomless. The others got theirs gratis from the "mainstream" news media, but even here there is a difference. With the rise of Barack Obama to become the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, the once-ubiquitous Clintons have fallen out of favor with the Nattering Nabobs. That leaves "Barry O." with the stage all to himself, and the news media can't push him at us enough.

Granted, it is an election year, and presidential candidates will be the focus of the public spotlight. To the casual observer, however, it would seem that this year there is only one candidate in the running, and only one political party from which to choose. This again is easy enough to explain. America's "mainstream" news media long since have given up even the pretense of fairness and objectivity. They are now out in the open with their agenda, which is to purge Washington of all conservatives and install a Democratic White House, to go, of course, with a Democratic Congress. Hence, the news these days is All Obama All The Time. Consider, for instance, the number of trips Republican presidential candidate John McCain has made to Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, and Europe. Where was the coverage then? Oh, it got mentioned, to be sure, along with such other notable events as the weekly meeting of the Planning and Zoning Committee of Kokomo, Indiana, and the exhibit of Grandpa Quimby's antique gun collection. Op-Ed pieces on Iraq by John McCain get rejected by the New York Times, which should come as a surprise to no one, considering that this is the newspaper which hasn't endorsed a Republican candidate for president since 1956. But when Barack Obama makes one trip -- one single trip -- overseas, it gets treated like the Second Coming. (An appropriate analogy, by the way, since Obama's supposed to be the "messiah.") Even this might be tolerable -- though just barely -- if the coverage were complete and well-rounded. But of course it is not. On ABC (the All Barack Channel), NBC (the National Barack Channel), CBS ( the Coverage for Barack Syndicate), and CNN (formerly the Clinton News Network, now reduced to just a meaningless acronym, in much the same manner as the former Government Employees Insurance Company is now simply GEICO), we see Obama only when he appears decisive and authoritative. Were it not for the Alternative news media (Fox News, talk radio, and the Internet) we might never have learned about the Obama gaffes, of which there have been many: the stuttering and stammering when Obama is forced to think on his feet and does not have a prepared text to which to refer, his confusion of the number of United States with that of variety of Heinz pickles, and his statement, since retracted, that under an Obama presidency Jerusalem would remain the capital of Israel. (Of what country, then, is Tel Aviv the capital?)

With advantages such as this, one would think a Democratic victory in November to be inevitable. Yet this may not be the case, as former U. S. senator and presidential candidate Fred Thompson made at a recent appearance as a guest on the Sean Hannity Program. Citing the curious rise during the 1990s of President Bill Clinton's approval ratings in the face of a constant barrage of reporting on the Clinton scandals, Thompson opined that all the pro-Obama coverage may generate a similar backlash among voters-- that the media may, in fact, be overplaying its hand in its obvious efforts to get Obama elected. To Mr. Thompson's speculation I would add one more: that the more exposure Obama gets, the more he is revealed to be an empty suit. He is not alone among Democrats, of course, in his basic ignorance of the most elementary basics, as most eloquently pointed out by Bruce Walker in his column posted on Radiofree West Hartford. The more we learn about Barack Obama, the more aware we become of such stellar presidential qualifications as:

-- a total of 143 working days in the United States Senate

-- no military service, no service to the military in a civilian capacity, and no service on any armed forces committee or subcommittee

-- his current, much-ballyhooed overseas trip accounting for the total of his foreign policy experience

-- his behaving while overseas as if he believes himself already president

-- his constant flip-flopping on key positions, much reminiscent of Bill Clinton, whose positions often changed with prevailing polls

So it just may be that All Barack All The Time is not such a bad thing, after all. In the end, the overexposure will in all likelihood do him more harm than good. It will mean, for instance, that vague entities such as "change" and "hope" will no longer suffice for voters who will want to know more about who this candidate is, where he stands, and what he has to offer. A handsome face and a resonant voice do not a president make, and discerning voters will recall that the character Ted Baxter from The Mary Tyler Moore Show had these same attributes. In fact, just about the only things Obama does have to offer are that, (1) he is black, (2) he is liberal, (3) he is a Democrat, and (4) he is not George W. Bush. That fourth factor may, in fact, get him more votes than the other three put together, but even here there is a caveat: Those who deride Bush as "Alfred E. Neuman" might so well to remember that "Alfred E. Neuman's" policies kept this country safe from terrorist attack since the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001. And, for all the excessive spending that took place during his two administrations, "Alfred E. Neuman's" fiscal policies yet kept our economy relatively sound, with the current nosedive taking place only after our Congress became Democratic. To this, the "New Messiah" offers an administration which would hike our taxes, vastly increase our spending, weaken our military, and lead to that defeat in Iraq that the "mainstream" news media have so eagerly anticipated and tirelessly worked to bring about.

So, to our news media, at the risk of tipping my hand, I would say keep it up. Keep force-feeding Barack Obama to the American people, and it just may be the single most deciding factor in the election of John McCain in November.