Obama Complains: The Press Hates Me! (Walter Russell Mead)

Most of us outside the bubble think that the mainstream media is pretty pro-Obama. We remember all those comparisons to Lincoln and FDR in the heady early days of the administration.

But apparently that’s not how it looks from the Oval Office; the president thinks he’s not getting a fair shot from the press. The New York Times reports:

One former White House staffer moaned that the reflexive anti-administration slant of the media undercut the president at every turn: “The feeling was, ‘man, we can’t catch a break,’ ” he told the Times, describing the White House view of the press in 1979.

Some of President Obama’s complaints about the media reflect criticisms about the MSM that we’ve made here: there’s too much horse race reporting looking at who is winning and who is losing, and not enough serious thought and reflection goes into the news. The press needs to do a better job getting serious ideas and reflective coverage out there into the news flow. We’re trying to do it here here at Via Meadia, and it isn’t easy — and we understand how public officials in both parties can be frustrated by a media climate that focuses on ‘gotcha’ journalism, who’s up and who’s down, and has a very narrow bandwidth when it comes to helping the public understand the tough and complicated issues of the day.

But overall, this president still benefits far more than most of his predecessors from a press that generally likes him, agrees with his policies on most key issues, and deeply hopes that he will be re-elected in November. Few incumbents have ever had this kind of support from the Fourth Estate; few challengers have ever had such a hard time getting a break from the media as Governor Romney.

Moreover, some of President Obama’s complaints are unsettling. As he sees it, the liberal narrative is “the truth”, competing narratives are “factually incorrect”, and the press has a duty not to treat truth on an equal basis with falsehood. By this standard, any article that doesn’t heap scorn and disdain on those who disagree with him is biased; “balance” is an illusion when it comes to subjects about which liberals are passionately convinced that they are right.

It just isn’t that simple. Political disagreements are often about values and context—about which facts are important and should move policy rather than about whether side A or side B is right about some specific point. There’s a totalitarian impulse and a deep hostility to the concept of public debate lurking not far below the surface here, and it’s a little unsettling that President Obama seems to think there are a lot of public policy issues on which the liberal viewpoint is True and the conservative viewpoint is Dumb.

Liberals are often some of the least tolerant people when they are sure they are right; like the Massachusetts Puritans from whom, culturally and intellectually, much of modern American liberalism descends, they believe in freedom for God’s Elect — and force to make the heathen and the unenlightened Do Right.

The Via Meadia bottom line here: it’s a good thing we have a Constitution and laws that limit the ability of the great and the good to decide what the press is free to say. If even Barack Obama, the most coddled and cosseted politician in modern American history, thinks the media is against him, it’s clear that no politician can ever be trusted to umpire the press.

Not sure it adds up to some psychopathology though, or a lot more people in Washington and elsewhere would have to be treated.

Narcissistic personality disorder fills the bill, although they are looking at dumping that diagnosis in DSM V.

Personality Traits

I'm usually not eager to make a diagnosis at a distance, but how do you reconcile claims that the "The Private Sector Is Doing Fine", 'You didn't build that' about business owners and yesterday in which Obama said, “Now, I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.”

Something ain't right.

P.S. Fixing personality disorders ain't easy either.

I'm usually not eager to make a diagnosis at a distance ...

My first thought is about Barry Goldwater and how psychiatrists psychoanalyzed him from a far and concluded that he was "paranoid," "schizophrenic," "psychotic," and "unstable." If that was wrong then, isn't caution called for now? My second thought is of Bill Clinton who was supposed to be a "malignant narcissist" or a "pathological narcissist," different from ordinary narcissists -- until Obama came along and Clinton became one of those ordinary, everyday, garden-variety narcissists.

... but how do you reconcile claims that the "The Private Sector Is Doing Fine", 'You didn't build that' about business owners and yesterday in which Obama said, “Now, I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.”

I don't have a problem with trying to figure things like that out, or with finding Obama narcissistic. There's enough evidence of vanity or arrogance or self-centeredness in his behavior -- all of those "I ... I ... I"s in his speeches, the talk about stopping the seas from rising, and all the rest.

But I figure, first, that you have to take into account how political differences can distort and exaggerate one's opinions about political opponents -- often you have to dial down some of the more exaggerated portraits -- and secondly, that few people exactly resemble the pathological types in the text books.

If you're halfway effective at anything, you've probably don't fit the ideal type. You aren't going to be as needy or sensitive or eccentric or self-destructive or megalomaniacal as the textbook descriptions. Narcissists can be quite good at "compartmentalizing" and possibly don't show the same traits in all areas of life. If they're at all successful in life, their behavior isn't entirely determined by the textbook definitions or predictable by psychoanalysis from a distance.

Also, the whole idea of narcissistic "fragility" -- the idea that a narcissist eventually reaches a point where his illusions and everything else in his life crumbles around him -- doesn't work for me. First, all political careers pursued long enough are liable to end in failure. Every President declines in popularity over the course of his term, and has failures and reversals. It's the nature of politics for politicians to reach the limits of power and competency and for people to get bored with them and write them off.

Then, too, the narcissists I've known haven't usually shattered or crumpled up and surrendered. Maybe they aren't classical cases of NPD, but thinking the world revolves around one's self can be a source of strength, a buffer against what the world throws at you. In some environments -- Washington, Hollywood, Wall Street, Harvard -- narcissism is rampant and expected and people who thrive there don't usually roll up and die when things go wrong.

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