Does Obama Need the Press?

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 10, 2008 9:51 AM

Barack Obama figured out early on that he had better limit his media consumption before it consumed him.

After three months of campaigning, he stopped reading blogs. After six months, he stopped watching cable news shows. After nine months, he stopped reading the clips, relying instead on his staff to flag important stories.

Obama said during a brief conversation that it was "just weird" to be constantly reading and watching reports on his candidacy, creating a "hall of mirrors" effect that he regarded as unhealthy. He said that cable news yakkers, like those on ESPN, make provocative comments because they have so much time to fill, even though politics, in his view, is far more important than sports.

Now the president-elect must decide how to handle the media as he shifts from campaign mode to commander in chief. If he is overly influenced by editorial criticism, he could be thrown off course in ways that were rarely evident during his highly disciplined campaign. But if Obama tunes out the press, he could find himself isolated in a White House bubble.

Robert Gibbs, the affable spokesman who will become press secretary, sees no danger of that. "We ran promising a more open and transparent administration, and the president-elect will keep that promise," Gibbs says.

Journalists, who were widely seen as giving Obama an easy ride during the campaign, generally hailed his election as a breakthrough moment for racial progress. Once a president takes office, though, an adversarial relationship usually flourishes, at least with beat reporters.

"You know what?" MSNBC's Chris Matthews said last week. "I want to do everything I can to make this thing work, this new presidency work." Asked by morning host Joe Scarborough whether that was his job, Matthews said: "Yeah, that's my job, because this country needs a successful presidency more than anything right now." Funny -- it's hard to recall many journalists saying they wanted to make Ronald Reagan's or George W. Bush's presidency work.

Matthews, of course, is in the opinion business. Others see tougher scrutiny ahead for Obama.

"He's going to screw up -- make some mistakes -- and those will give journalists the opening to get in his face a little bit," says Eric Deggans, media critic for the St. Petersburg Times. "Obama doesn't ingratiate himself with the press the way the classic John McCain did. He shows a willingness to manipulate them and shoulder them aside. If he continues handling the press that way, it's going to breed resentment, and that's going to produce tougher stories."

Deggans, who heads the local chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, says television shows love to book African Americans who take on the Illinois Democrat. "I don't think it's going to be hard for black journalists to be critical of Obama, because once they are, media opportunities abound," he says.

Conservative commentator Amy Holmes, a former GOP Senate aide, says the press will be tempted to portray an "embittered, embattled Republican minority" as "thwarting the will of Barack Obama. Republicans will be going into a media environment of cheerleading for Obama that will characterize the opposition as nasty rather than reasonable."

Even if journalists chronicle Obama making occasional blunders, Holmes says, they will not question whether he is pushing "an agenda that is to the left of where the American people are." That assumes, of course, that he doesn't steer a more centrist course.

Obama may enjoy a respite after an inauguration that is all but certain to be covered as another watershed moment. Jim Warren, former managing editor of the Chicago Tribune and a Huffington Post columnist, predicts that he will get something of a honeymoon.

"There will be a lot of beat-sweetener pieces to cultivate sources," he says. "But within the year, normal competitive impulses will take over."

After eight years of President Bush, many people have forgotten the tense relations between the fourth estate and Bill Clinton, who spoke derisively of the "knee-jerk liberal press." The Arkansas native felt that Washington's media establishment viewed him condescendingly and were obsessed with scandal. Once major media outlets broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Clinton railed against journalists who vacuumed up leaks from Ken Starr and his special prosecutor's office.

Obama, an obscure state senator until four years ago, has no such baggage, but neither has he tried to cultivate close relationships with journalists, even among liberal columnists who revere him. He limited his contact with traveling reporters, some of whom viewed him as aloof. And his tight-as-a-drum campaign almost never leaked or engaged in unattributed finger-pointing.

At the same time, the Obama team built a mighty digital operation that posted its videos on YouTube, was active on Facebook and sent text messages to supporters revealing the candidate's choice of Joe Biden as his running mate. That was a classic test of wills in which Obama was able to keep his decision from the media until 12:52 a.m. on the morning of the announcement.

When the Obama camp has wanted to put out a bit of news, it has tended to favor such outlets as Politico, whose bloggers were the first to get the word last week that the president-elect would name Gibbs as his top spokesman and Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff.

"One of the legacies of the campaign is the de facto death of mainstream newspapers and broadcast outlets as the key influences," Warren says. "To what extent will the Huffington Post and MSNBC.com, perhaps, be the source of breaking news? There's a greater ability to control your message and to circumvent the traditional gatekeepers."

Obama faced some of those gatekeepers at his post-election news conference Friday. He drew a mixture of softballs, polite but firm questions about his policies and the query that probably generated the most interest: Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times asking what kind of dog he plans to get.

Will Obama feel the need to hold such sessions regularly, or will they be dismissed as a 20th-century relic? If you can beam your message to millions of computer and cellphone screens, who needs the filter of skeptical reporters?

But while major media organizations may be dismissed as dinosaurs these days, it's worth remembering that the most damaging moments of Sarah Palin's campaign came during her interviews with two network anchors, Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson.

Obama raised enormous expectations for a brighter, post-partisan future, which the New York Times says his aides are now trying to tamp down. When the messy process of governance fails to match his lofty rhetoric, journalists will have no choice but to point out the shortcomings.

Emanuel, for one, understands the game. The Chicago congressman was a bare-knuckle, press-savvy spin artist in the Clinton White House, leaking tidbits to favored organizations, playing reporters off each other and yelling at those who crossed him. He reached out to harsh critics, once having columnist William Safire, whom he called "Uncle Bill," over for dinner. When Clinton was launching an initiative on race relations, Emanuel arranged for the Wall Street Journal's Michael Frisby to get the first interview, because Frisby was the only black reporter covering the White House for a major outlet.

A campaign tends to be a self-contained world, consumed by questions over this or that poll or attack ad. A president is under constant bombardment from every direction -- members of Congress, rebellious bureaucrats, interest groups, corporate executives, foreign leaders -- all of whom will use the media as their megaphone. Even if he continues his practice of not reading about himself, Obama is unlikely to cede that battleground to his critics.

Turning to the post-election landscape. . . . Can Obama keep everyone happy? The Boston Globe investigates:

"Labor unions want President-elect Barack Obama to move quickly on universal healthcare and to make it easier for workers to organize. Latino advocacy groups want immigration reform. Even the National Trust for Historic Preservation is urging Obama to seek full federal funding 'to protect our heritage.'

"Interest groups are furiously drawing up wish lists for the incoming Obama administration, many of them hoping to cash in on the investments they made -- in volunteers, political support, and campaign contributions -- in Obama's commanding win.

"But given the nature of Obama's victory, which was propelled more by a grass-roots army of millions than by traditional Democratic constituencies, is the president-elect really indebted to anybody? Some analysts and Washington veterans say no."

And if he tries to meet all these demands, he'll blow up his presidency.

Plenty of back-and-forth about Rahm Emanuel, the once-and-future White House official. The New Republic's Noam Scheiber dismisses criticism of Rahm as a rabid dog:

"Democratic critics of the pick argue that Rahm's reputation as a partisan, polarizing figure undercuts Obama's promise to change Washington. Or, more to the point, they worry that voters will conclude as much. Set aside the question of whether or not Rahm actually is polarizing . . .

"Even if he were, I'm just not sure the public looks to your chief-of-staff pick as an indication of whether or not you're changing the tone. High-level cabinet appointments maybe. And I'd definitely reserve a few key cabinet slots for people viewed as nonpartisan and non-polarizing. But, by and large, the White House staff isn't your public face."

On the other hand, he may not be liberal enough for some, including the Nation's John Nichols:

"Emanuel is the opposite of a partisan. He is someone who has worked very hard for a very long time -- first in the Clinton administration and then in Congress -- to change the Democratic party into a more cautious, centrist and compromised institution. As head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006, he actually undercut efforts by progressive candidates who had a chance to win in order to advance the candidacies of more conservative candidates who lost.

"Why? Because on the most vital issues -- economic and trade policy, war and peace, civil liberties -- this true believer in the worst compromises of the Clinton era has frequently been at odds with labor and progressive forces within the party."

The post-mortems continue on the right, where Rich Lowry doesn't sugarcoat the McCain loss:

"Republicans are consoling themselves by telling anyone who will listen that we still live in a 'center-right country.' They're right. That's the good news. The bad news is that they've lost the center.

"According to exit polls, Barack Obama won moderates by a whopping 21 points on Tuesday, 60-39 percent. That more than doubled John Kerry's 9-point margin over George W. Bush among moderates in 2004 . . .

"As for Republicans, it'll be small comfort to live in a center-right country until they can reach the center again."

Bill Kristol says his man McCain lost by making Iraq marginal:

"John McCain said repeatedly that he'd rather lose an election than lose a war. We ended up winning a war, and he ended up losing the election. It's not quite the cosmic injustice of the British electorate rejecting Churchill in 1945 -- but it's no small injustice either."

Why Ann Althouse turned against McCain:

"Usually, I prefer divided government, but that doesn't mean I need to support McCain. I've seen McCain put way too much effort into pleasing Democrats and flouting his own party, and I can picture Obama standing up to the Democratic Congress and being his own man. What, really, will he owe them? McCain, by contrast, will need them. And we've seen that he wants to be loved by them."

But Peggy Noonan wonders whether Obama can stand up to the left:

"Some wonder if Barack Obama is a hard leftist or more a pragmatic politician who simply rose in leftist precincts (that would be you, Hyde Park, Chicago). A less charged way to put the question would be: Is he a strict modern liberal, or possibly a man of some considerable moderate instincts? The obvious answer is: We're about to find out. But I think the more interesting answer is: He's about to find out. In the presidency, daily decisions become patterns become pictures become, in time, full-length portraits. In the Oval Office you meet yourself every day. It is going to be very interesting to see Mr. Obama meet himself in this way.

"His biggest challenge? Not demoralized and reorganizing Republicans on the Hill but his own party, with a hunger for innovation and a head of steam built up and about to burst. And the incredible sense of expectation his supporters hold. When you think someone's Moses, you expect him to part the seas."

Katha Pollitt is grateful to Palin, despite the fact that they agree on nothing:

"Palin's presence on the Republican ticket forced family-values conservatives to give public support to working mothers, equal marriages, pregnant teens and their much-maligned parents. Talk-show frothers, Christian zealots and professional antifeminists -- Rush Limbaugh and Phyllis Schlafly -- insisted that a mother of five, including a 'special-needs' newborn, could perfectly well manage governing a state (a really big state, as we were frequently reminded), while simultaneously running for veep and, who knows, field-dressing a moose. No one said she belonged at home. No one said she was neglecting her husband or failing to be appropriately submissive to him. No one blamed her for 17-year-old Bristol's out-of-wedlock pregnancy or hard-partying high-school-dropout boyfriend. No one even wondered out loud why Bristol wasn't getting married before the baby arrived.

"All these things have officially morphed from sins to 'challenges,' just part of normal family life. No matter how strategic this newfound broadmindedness is, it will not be easy to row away from it. Thanks to Sarah, ladies, we can do just about anything we want as long as we don't have an abortion."

Can this really be big news for the New York Post, as in "OBAMAS ENJOY HISTORIC DATE"?

"Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, had their first 'date' since his historic election as president of the United States, stepping out in style Saturday night on Chicago's Magnificent Mile to dine at their favorite eatery, Spiaggia."

Imagine how hard it will be to get a table there now.

I suppose it was inevitable:

"In the last week, Barack, Obama, Michelle, Malia and Sasha have become inspirations for first and middle names across the United States."

How did Politico hold back so long? Five whole days after the election, and its banner headline:

"GOP Gears Up for 2012."

How about, journalists gear up to fill existential void left by end of campaign and keep Web traffic alive?