I argued the other day that the Associated Press seemed to be taking sides, rather blatantly, in the presidential election. With each passing day, it appears the wire service is dropping the pretense altogether.
At this point, it goes beyond just the AP giving John McCain donuts and McCain giving the AP barbecue. First there was the slam-job on Obama that read like an RNC oppo dump, followed by a scathing, 900-word reprimand of Obama’s decision to bypass the public financing system in the general election, filled with errors of fact and judgment.
When Obama unveiled his faith-based plan this week, the AP got the story backwards. When Obama talked about his Iraq policy Thursday, the AP said he’d “opened the door” to reversing course, even though he hadn’t.
The AP’s David Espo wrote a hagiographic, 1,200-word piece, praising McCain’s “singular brand of combative bipartisanship,” which was utterly ridiculous.
But yesterday, the AP pushed the objectivity envelope a little further with a mind-numbing, 1,100-word piece on Obama “being shadowed by giant flip-flops.”
The Illinois senator has excited many with the notion that he is a new, transcendent type of politician. But he is giving the GOP effort ammunition and endangering his “Change We Can Believe In” motto with several shifts to the center, most recently on the Iraq war, his campaign’s defining issue.
One almost has to wonder if the AP is trying to be deliberately awful.
The piece seeks to scrutinize Obama’s list of alleged flip-flops — some legitimate, some imaginary — without so much as a hint of scrutiny on McCain’s dozens of reversals.
But it’s the Iraq discussion in the piece that was breathtaking.
Unequivocal opposition to the war drove his entrance into the race. It helped him defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton for the nomination. It made him a darling of the anti-war activists who are now prominent and influential in the Democratic Party.
Those forces won’t like Thursday’s statement-bordering-on-a-promise that “I’ll … continue to refine my policy” on Iraq, particularly after he visits and makes what he said would be a “thorough assessment.”
Obama’s problem on Iraq isn’t that he is changing his position drastically, because he isn’t.
Obama has always said his promise to end the war would require consultations with military commanders and, possibly, flexibility. This, in fact, is the only reasonable stance for a U.S. commander in chief to take.
His problem is that his change in emphasis to flexibility from a hard-nosed end-the-war stance — including his recent position that withdrawing combat troops could take as long as 16 months — will now be heard loud and clear by an anti-war camp that may have ignored it before. So he could face a double-whammy in their feelings of betrayal and other voters’ belief in the Republican charge that he is craven.
Josh Marshall said this analysis was enough to make his “eyes bleed,” and that’s not especially hyperbolic.
This AP piece, written by Jennifer Loven, argues that Obama has “shifted to the center” on Iraq. That, of course, isn’t true. In fact, I know this with some certainly in large part because Jennifer Loven went on to tell me that Obama hasn’t changed his position on Iraq. How does one shift and not shift at the same time on the same issue? It’s apparently a mystery that only the AP knows.
Loven went on to say that Obama’s “recent position” is a 16-month withdrawal timeline. Except, it’s not “recent” at all — that’s been Obama’s position all along. (Note to the AP: Google is your friend. You can even use it for free.)
The underlying point of the piece seems to be that Obama will be perceived as having shifted — angering the right (for inconsistency and political expediency) and offending the left (for moving away from his previous commitment) — even if there’s no substantive change at all. But here’s the key point that’s usually over looked: that’s why we have the media. We’re supposed to have reporters, like the AP’s Jennifer Loven, to help us separate fact and fiction. If Obama hasn’t shifted at all — and he hasn’t — we don’t need the Associated Press to manufacture details and tell us of potential consequences of public confusion, we need the Associated Press to help people be less confused. You know, by reporting actual facts.
Please, AP, it’s not too late. America needs you to be responsible. You’ve been falling down on the job, but there’s time to get your act together. There’s too much at stake for you to screw up this badly, this often.