Seduced by the Saint

By Janet Albrechtsen
The Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/
January 21, 2009

You know that something is amiss with rational judgment when economics Nobel laureate Amartya Sen describes events surrounding Barack Obama’s arrival as US President as “turning an exceptional human being into almost the kind of godhead that he has become”.

Sober analysts must be standing aside, wondering about the role of emotion in politics and its implications for critical scrutiny of Obama’s presidency. But many other observers have metaphorically cast aside their crutches and accepted that Obama has made them whole again.

To be sure, none of this is new. During Obama’s campaign, Hollywood types swooned at the sight of a good-looking, left-wing, articulate man of colour. And the media was equally seduced.

Back in September, The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland, suffering that sinking feeling of four years ago when the Democrats lost, warned the US that the world would not tolerate a vote against Obama. “If Americans reject Obama, they will be sending the clearest possible message to the rest of us, and, make no mistake, we shall hear it.”

Mind you, it would be mean-spirited to complain about Freedland and the rest of the left-liberal media rejoicing in the inauguration today.

President Obama entered the history books our children will read. His presidency bookends an era that began with segregation between blacks and whites and ended when he became the 44th American president and the first black man in the White House. No one can take that away from him. Nor can anyone doubt his charisma or political skills.

However, the inauguration is just a moment in history. While Obama’s toastmaster skills are exceptional, his performance as President is an entirely different and more uncertain matter. Yet if the liberal media’s performance to date is any guide, predetermined judgments in favour of Obama will infect coverage of his presidency.

Now, a distinction must be made here between opinion writers and news reporters. Commentators and opinion writers are expected, indeed usually required, to present a point of view, to make judgments. (Thus Phillip Adams is entitled to get orgasmic when he types the word Obama, just as Andrew Bolt may call for pain relief at the thought of Saint Barack.) That is their role in a functioning media.

But when opinion leaks into news coverage and straight analysis, as so often happens, something altogether more dangerous is happening. The media forfeits their place as the fourth estate when they forget their primary duty to report the facts so the average reader, as well the commentariat, can form their own judgments.

Regrettably, much of the mainstream media in the Western world have abandoned this trusted role. They want to be players, not mere observers. Intellectual scepticism, which should sit at the heart of good political analysis, is too often a rarity in an increasingly liberal (in the American sense of that word) media.

During the George W. Bush years, cynicism accompanied much of the media’s reporting of his presidency. During Obama’s term, that cynicism appears almost certain to give way to a predictable pattern of fawning support. Those in the media who were devoted to dishing out criticism of Bush on so many scores for just being Bush will award Obama a free ride from criticism for just being Obama. The not-so-secret deal is that he’s handsome, he’s articulate, he’s left wing and he’s black. So what’s there to criticise?

From my present vantage point in Canada, The Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson gave it away when he declared at the weekend in a leading news piece that “a bond has formed between Barack Obama and Americans unlike any we have seen between a new president and the people”.

It seems churlish to ask for evidence of that proposition, and none was given. The media can feel the vibe and that is enough for them. In fact, the real bond is between Obama and the media.

At least Ibbitson paid lip service to the dangers of disappointment. The enormous expectations about Obama are such that it is inevitable some people will discover he is only mortal. But will the media make this discovery any time soon? Or will they extend to Obama a honeymoon that sidelines their own critical analysis of his administration?

Take Obama’s train trip from Philadelphia to Washington, tracking the route Abraham Lincoln took in 1861. Imagine the media’s reaction had Bush mimicked Lincoln in 2000. Back then the media delighted in reporting the protesters along Pennsylvania Avenue. In 2009, the media are lapping up the Obama drama, writing about their tearful reactions, already inclined to see Obama as Lincolnesque in stature. Sure they are both from Illinois. But analysis? None.

Indeed, for Odrama to present himself in this way as Lincoln’s heir hints at the sort of hubris that usually sets in only towards the end of a presidency. To do so at a time in his career when he still has no executive track record of any kind and precious few achievements as a legislator suggests a vast presumptuousness.

But this has gone largely unremarked. For much of the media, the cocktail of colour, left-wing politics and grand rhetoric is enough to secure him immortal presidential greatness, whether or not he achieves anything.

This is deeply disturbing given the hefty issues that will require Obama’s attention. Think climate change, the global financial mess, Iraq, the Middle East. How Obama handles each of these issues should define his presidency, not his stirring personal history, his charisma or his rhetoric.

Sadly, it looks as if Obama may get a free pass on tough media scrutiny largely because so many journalists share his politics, just as Kevin Rudd escapes the sort of media scrutiny that followed John Howard. For instance, where was the outrage about the Australian Human Rights Commission’s report last week that children are still being held indefinitely in our detention centres? Where are those socially concerned Australians chaining themselves to Villawood? Or was it always just a weapon to attack Howard? And where is the media’s indictment of Rudd given they so often condemned Howard for being cruel and callous?

But there is likely to be a deeper, though related, reason for the bias. Progressive politics is essentially an emotional, rather than rational, pursuit. Its foundations rest on altruistic, even utopian, beliefs about the perfectibility of man and society. For progressives, hope triumphs over experience.

That causes leftist politicians to place a large premium on myth-making, rhetoric and romance. And leftist journalists swallow it whole. Results matter much less to both of them. That’s one reason, for example, that Gough Whitlam is still a demigod to the ALP and to its media adherents.

In a tough world, however, we will need more from Obama and from his press gallery. What will matter is whether Obama does a good job, not whether he’s black, good looking and speaks well.