When the ‘presumptuous’ meme jumps the shark

July 30, 2008

I vaguely recall some news items from New Year’s about a group of scholars issuing a list of words to be banished from the lexicon for “misuse, overuse and general uselessness.” Among the selections from 2007 were “under the bus,” “it is what it is,” and “perfect storm.”

It’s only been two weeks, but if I don’t think I can take another media item about Barack Obama being “presumptuous.” We’re nowhere near the end of the year, but can’t we just ban the word now?

The WaPo’s Dana Milbank throws some fuel on the fire.

Barack Obama has long been his party’s presumptive nominee. Now he’s becoming its presumptuous nominee.

Fresh from his presidential-style world tour, during which foreign leaders and American generals lined up to show him affection, Obama settled down to some presidential-style business in Washington yesterday. He ordered up a teleconference with the (current president’s) Treasury secretary, granted an audience to the Pakistani prime minister and had his staff arrange for the chairman of the Federal Reserve to give him a briefing. Then, he went up to Capitol Hill to be adored by House Democrats in a presidential-style pep rally.

Along the way, he traveled in a bubble more insulating than the actual president’s. Traffic was shut down for him as he zoomed about town in a long, presidential-style motorcade….
The 5:20 TBA turned out to be his adoration session with lawmakers in the Cannon Caucus Room, where even committee chairmen arrived early, as if for the State of the Union. Capitol Police cleared the halls — just as they do for the actual president. The Secret Service hustled him in through a side door — just as they do for the actual president.

This is getting a bit silly. John McCain has traveled extensively abroad during the campaign and met with foreign leaders (just as the actual president does). He’s releasing weekly radio addresses (just as the actual president does). In May, McCain’s campaign released an ad identifying the senator on screen as “President McCain.” Two weeks later, McCain gave a high-profile speech about what the world will look like at the end of his first term in the White House.

And the number of news outlets that noticed this and described McCain as “presumptuous” is exactly zero.

Milbank’s piece is apparently intended to be lighthearted, but the criticism underpinning the piece is plainly disingenuous. Just as importantly, it’s feeding a media-created controversy for no reason.

The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder reported last week that Obama has directed his staff to begin planning for his transition to the White House, causing Republicans to howl about premature drape measuring. Obama was even feeling confident enough to give British Prime Minister Gordon Brown some management advice over the weekend. “If what you’re trying to do is micromanage and solve everything, then you end up being a dilettante,” he advised the prime minister, portraying his relative inexperience much as President Bush did in 2000.

But this is wildly misleading, and reads more like McCain campaign oppo than a legitimate news piece in the Washington Post. Milbank notes that Obama has begun planning a transition, but neglects to note that Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush all did the exact same thing at this stage of their respective campaigns. Milbank notes Obama’s remarks to Brown, but neglects to mention the context — Obama was talking about his own distaste for micromanaging; he wasn’t giving the British Prime Minister “management advice.” [Update: The quote Milbank used didn’t even come from Obama’s chat with Brown.] It’s almost as if Milbank wanted to pad his article, so he fudged a few details to bolster his faulty thesis.

Then came Obama’s overseas trip and the campaign’s selection of which news organizations could come aboard. Among those excluded: the New Yorker magazine, which had just published a satirical cover about Obama that offended the campaign.

Even Bush hasn’t tried that.

Now, I have no idea whether the campaign sought to “punish” the New Yorker, but it would be helpful if Milbank had also explained to readers that the McCain campaign threatens news outlets that cover the race in a way they don’t like, and has thrown journalists off McCain’s campaign bus for unfavorable coverage.

“I think this can be an incredible election,” Obama said later. “I look forward to collaborating with everybody here to win the election.”

Win the election? Didn’t he do that already?

Yes, according to the media, when Obama isn’t being presumptuous, he’s still being presumptuous.

Campaign reporting sure can get tiresome, can’t it?

May we also please throw “elite” on the fire?

  • Presumptuous may be the great dog whistle of this election. Translated into American, it reads “uppity.”

  • I have no idea whether Obama was punishing the New Yorker either, but it’s interesting and rather sad that that stupid cover got more attention than the lengthy and thorough (and not entirely flattering, though not overtly critical, either) article about Obama’s Chicago years contained in the same issue.

  • And the number of news outlets that noticed this and described McCain as “presumptuous” is exactly zero.

    Well, he’s white and a Republican, and is therefore by double-definition not uppity, and since the Republicans have a bunch of pretty good plans for stealing the election, they consider the outcome to be a foregone conclusion.

    /snark

    On the other hand, I just heard a local public radio talk-show commentator say “When President Obama wins, um, If Senator Obama wins the presidency…….”

  • So he’s gone from lacking the qualifications to be president to acting TOO presidential, too soon. Great.

    You know what I want? I want a presidential candidate that struts around like a pro wrestler. Tears his shirt off, stares down the camera as he talks about what he’s gonna do to his opponent in the steel cage debate, howls at the moon, and insists people smell what he’s cooking.

    Because if you comport yourself with dignity, and command respect, and speak from the heart with intelligence and clarity, then f*** you, you’re presumptuous and uppity and HOW DARE YOU?

  • God forbid the candidate should have any fun.

    I guess Obama is supposed to have fun in other ways, like telling jokes about women being raped by apes, and/or bombing countries that haven’t attacked or threatened us.

    And God forbid the candidate should do any planning, after all the current president doesn’t plan much and everything he’s done has turned out…

  • One thing’s for sure, if pollster.com is accurate, Obama is on his way to victory.

    And the media hates blowout elections, they’re bad for business.

  • Even the (real) liberal media like Dana Milbank are part of the “establishment” – and have some problems with real change. Hopefuly we will see more people like Andrea Mitchell start seeing the light and start coming over to the “right” side.

  • What in the hell is all y’all’s problem?

    I mean, we’re never going to be able to elect McCain on his merits, so of course the media has to be in the bag for him. Jeez. Just drink the koolaid already. It’s watermelon-kiwi flavored.

  • “Presumptuous” is the super-secret code for, “I’m scared witless that Obama’s gonna win. And my guys in Opposition Research have come up with virtually nothing since some minor hoo-ha over neighboring property in some part of Chicago. Won’t some sympathetic pundist help me out, puh-leez?”

    Presumptuously yours,
    The New York Crank

  • so what it to be done? the wapo ombudswoman is pretty hopeless, and while admittedly the paper itself has been in long-term decline, it’s not going to fail by november. over and over i ask myself, how do we get these people to stop repeating each other and actually pay attention to reality, and i can never come up with an answer.

  • “Campaign reporting sure can get tiresome, can’t it?” – Mr. CB

    A new terminology should be created for the smeary propaganda these folks put out. It’s partisan and idolatrous and incoherent and totally prevalent. It’s easy to identify who benefits from the tortured spin they put on things and spin is really all they contribute.

    “It’s almost as if Milbank wanted to pad his article, so he fudged a few details to bolster his faulty thesis.” – Mr. CB

    I get this impression constantly. They’ve got to put words on paper so they just toss out some inane crap to fill a page and then head for lunch. They love McBush and perceive the path of least resistance as that of fluffing McBush so that’s that. It’s a tuff job but someone’s got to do it. What they write is pathologically boneheaded and so transparently wrong that you would think they would be compelled to stop just from contemplating the tortured mess they’ve made before their very eyes.

    Set up the 10,000 monkeys with workstations. The results are bound to be as accurate and probably more entertaining.

    And the word “news” shouldn’t be allowed to exist within ten words either side of the word “fox”.

  • feeding a media-created controversy for no reason

    Oh, you meant 99.8% of the MSM headlines, didn’t you. I presume you did, does that make me an insurgent? McCain, stick a fork in him, he’s done! God I haven’t felt this good since 1992.

  • burro said: May we also please throw “elite” on the fire?

    Funny you should mention that. I’ve been thinking that “presumptuous” is the new “elite” brought on when “elite” didn’t stick (I mean, black guy, humble beginnings, really). “Presumptuous” is an attitude anyone can have, regardless of background.

    By the way, I’d like to burn “… is the new… ” starting with the next comment.

  • “But this is wildly misleading, and reads more like McCain campaign oppo than a legitimate news piece in the Washington Post.”

    They have legitimate news pieces in the Washington Post? And they’re written by Dana Milbank? Huh! I learn something new at CB every day!

  • Burro @ 1 – let’s save the word “elite” and just throw the elites on the fire. Of course that would be bad, but it’s hard not to get a little warmth from fantasizing it…

  • My impression of the “presumptuous one,” for the last year and a half Obama has outclassed everyone else in the so-called political class, in both parties. He is thoughtful, articulate, clever, principled, and prepared.

    We have become accustomed to the soft classism of lowered expectations. The politician as an ignorant, two-faced, dishonest, bungle-tongued crook has become the norm.

    Working hard, being well versed in the intricacies of an issue, and acting in a manner that does not benefit corporate interest at the expense everyone else is presumptuous.

    How dare he!

  • But to these propaganda lemmings, Obama “is” being presumptuous.

    He has overstepped their pre-defined boundaries of what a Democratic candidate is supposed to do.

    He doesn’t cry when the mud is thrown at him; instead, he throws it right back at the source from whence it came.

    He doesn’t cringe from the attack; he wades into the assault, and hits back.

    He isn’t settling for just the “safe” Dem states; he’s getting behind the wheel of Dean’s 50-state strategy, and going for it all.

    He’s not depending on merely the tradition Dem voting blocs; again, he’s going for it all.

    He’s not “playing by the rules” that the media have pre-established with their true masters, the GOP.

    So—in a word, he “is” being presumptuous.

    And in this case, being presumptuous is a good thing. A very good thing. A damned good thing that these United States of America has been sorely in need of for a great many years.

    If the GOP and their made-in-Bushylvania symbiotic inflatable sex-toy kit media leeches don’t like it, then fvck the whole lot of them. Throw them in a steel cage, take them out to sea, and send the whole damned wretched lot of them—media, GOP, steel cage, and all—down to Davey Jones.

  • And the media hates blowout elections, they’re bad for business.

    I don’t recall any of these transparent attempts to even up the participants back when Bush I was destroying Dukakis, or Reagan was flattening Mondale. Admittedly some years back, but from what I can see the only time the media puts their collective thumb on the scales is when it benefits a Republican.

  • “We have become accustomed to the soft classism of lowered expectations. The politician as an ignorant, two-faced, dishonest, bungle-tongued crook has become the norm. — Winkandanod “

    Interesting how that works. The most powerful office on earth, managing the largest bureaucracy on earth and give it to the dumbest guy we can find because we can “relate” to him.

    I always thought that wanting to have a beer with an alcoholic was the ultimate in stupidity, but giving a guy foreign policy creds because he was a POW may set a new standard.

  • All these reporters, including the smug and sanctimonious Dana Milbank, should be called out for their racism. Because that’s what this really is. They aren’t just in the bag for McCain; they are trying to frighten the American public about the black guy. They know they can’t come right out and say “uppity nigger” anymore so they are doing it more subtley. They are also insulting us by suggesting that the “elite” (aka smart) guy isn’t like us. We’re dumb and don’t we want another dumb white guy to lead us?

  • “You know what I want? I want a presidential candidate that struts around like a pro wrestler. Tears his shirt off, stares down the camera as he talks about what he’s gonna do to his opponent in the steel cage debate, howls at the moon, and insists people smell what he’s cooking.”

    President Comacho for Idiocracy? :p

  • McCain is presumtuous in presuming he should live so long as to complete a first term.

    I think it would be premature to ban “under the bus”. It has been the most important phrase of the campaigning this year, especially with McCain’s “Straight Talk Express” (What? No Gay Talk Express?)

    If you aren’t for Obama (which I wasn’t when this all began) I can undersstand some of those feelings about his arrogance, and the Obamania, and even some presumptuous, but there’s no substance in claims he has no substance. He has competence and that scares those people.

  • OK, it’s time for Keith Olbermann to GRILL his favorite guest Dana Milbank on this item…

  • Nice to see Dana Milbank finally “getting with it” there at the Washington Litter-box Liner, er, I mean Post. He must be worried about his job, as should all the failures working for the failed media. (Notice how thin newspapers are now? Yesterday I thought I was picking up the weekly neighborhood throwaway instead of hte LA Times – which is now the neighborhood throwaway).

  • Obama is presumptuous in presuming that he can talk to American voters as if they have a brain.

    Slappy said: You know what I want? I want a presidential candidate that struts around like a pro wrestler. Tears his shirt off, stares down the camera as he talks about what he’s gonna do to his opponent in the steel cage debate, howls at the moon, and insists people smell what he’s cooking.

    Okay I was actually getting into this before I realized that it was what you didn’t want. 🙂 But I like the phrase “smell what I’m cooking”.

    Hey Beep52, presumptuous is the new uppity. 🙂

  • Sadly (in terms of what it says about “us”), Obama is actually over-qualified. Not to be President, but to be a candidate for President.

    I watched part of the Obama interview with the Unity 08 Journalists of Color conference. He seemed very relaxed the way they had it set up, almost too much so, and very conversational. When asked about various issues, he would give these long, thoughtful, intelligent, nuanced answers that were most impressive. Except that all I could think about was that no one would ever hear the full answer, just an out-of-context snippet. And when you started listing for those as if you were a Rove operative, there were plenty of them – things like “now, despite all that some people will say I want nationalized health care. . .” But the biggest cringe was when he was asked about McCain’s attacks on his overseas trip. He started out with a (semi) joke that the reason they were upset was that “we really did it well.” Then he proceeded to give a great answer that touched on the fact that McCain suggested the trip, McCain has also made trips out of the country, the great advantages of meeting with troops in the field, with foreign leaders, etc. And I said to Zeitwife (wifegeist?) “the sad thing is all anyone will show is his joke about doing it well.” Sure enough, the next day online I see three headlines “Obama: We did European Trip Well” and making him sound arrogant, rather than intelligent.

  • Rabi said:
    President Comacho for Idiocracy? :p

    If you interrupt McCain during a debate, he’ll snap, “Don’t bother me, I’m ‘batin’.”

  • Elitist and Presumptuous are terms reserved for those who have massive amounts of personal dignity. We can’t have that.

    RacerX, that link was hilarious!

  • Obama is actually over-qualified. Not to be President, but to be a candidate for President. — zeitgeist

    That comment just proves you’re overqualified to vote. [insert smiley face here]

  • Dana Whatsisface clearly believes that spreading the McCain campaign’s talking points is the best road to take over MoDo’s position as Queen of the Inane Political Tools.

  • 34. On July 30th, 2008 at 12:13 pm, beep52 said:
    Obama is actually over-qualified. Not to be President, but to be a candidate for President. — zeitgeist

    That comment just proves you’re overqualified to vote. [insert smiley face here]

    I would expect the person administering the voter rolls to reach the same conclusion and remove me, except that fortunately I live where both my county and state election officials are D’s. I don’t think the Republican vote suppressors have figured out how to get around that. yet. i hope.

  • Milbank’s off the Easter Egg Hunt for sure, now.

    Based on his record, I don’t think he’s being racist at all. He takes the adversarial role as an important part of his job. And he can’t find anything concrete to be oppo about so he has to attack at Obama’s ‘audaciousness’ to demonstrate he’s not ‘under the spell’ that McCain’s attacking the press for.

    I think Steve’s right; this was meant to be a lighthearted poke in the ribs. But it ultimately comes across as odd, unenlightening, puritanical and flat. Milbank just lacks the comedic bonafides to pull off his attempted Church Lady routine. He may share Carvey’s first name, but that’s as close as he got.

  • Milbank’s piece is apparently intended to be lighthearted […] — CB

    Ya think? Seemed heavy-handed to me; I’d definitely keep him out of the kitchen when baking a souffle (cheeze… my “dictionary” doesn’t seem to know the word. How undereducated of it). I’d keep him out of humour business, too (yeah, yeah… and out of “funny business” as well).

    A while back — 2yrs? 3? — WaPo had this feature, on p2 of the Sunday Outlook section, called “Zeitgeist”. It was a humorous review of the most popular stories (in all of the media, not just WaPo) of the week, with little arrows showing whether the story was gathering steam or on its way out. It was something I read regularly and, after a while, noticed that, most of the time the snippets were only faintly funny but, once in a while, they were hilarious. So, I started paying attention to who was compiling them. And, sure enough, the faintly funny ones were Millbank’s work…

    Unfortunately, I no longer remember who did the truly hilarious ones even though, at the time, I was motivated enough to write to Howell (? the WaPo “ombudsman”) and commend the guy. Often wondered whether my recommendation had anything to do with the fact that the funny guy was never again tasked with the job and that, shortly afterwards, the feature was dropped entirely.

  • libra, i think that feature actually originated on WaPo-owned Slate and WaPo liked it enough to steal it. one of the main writers was female and I wish I could remember which one because I, too, thought some of the entries were pretty clever.

  • Slappy Magoo…comment 5…you just described the president of the USA in the not so distant future from the movie “IDIOCRACY”. Where the dumbing down of America is characterized in a realistically hysterical manner. You can see the republican party at work. If you haven’t seen it, it’s available at your local video rental store and well worth the watch.

    Dana Milbank is not a credible reporter but plays one on TV. We can’t get Bush out of office fast enough. If voters had their way we’d hold elections today and skip the inaugural process doing it Las Vegas style and have the AG replaced that same evening. It’s more a practical matter than one of presumption. We count the days and hrs to finally begin doing something about the Bush/Cheney/McCain disaster.

    The ship is sinking and Milbank is concerned because Obama is hurrying down the stairs rather than waiting on the elevator. For Dana, the tar pits are not yet full. Plenty of room for the dinosaurs of establishment journalism. Pointing an accusing finger at Obama leaves four fingers pointing back at McCain. Once again, reporter/stenographers judge their readers stupid.

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