WING? IT'S HIS TRUNK:

The mystification of change: On the media's game of good and evil. (James Bowman, January 2009, New Criterion)

I have a good feeling about this change in the news about America. Surely, if the media have any power to change attitudes, we can look confidently forward to America’s resumption of its position as the “shining city on a hill” that Ronald Reagan used to talk about—and that the media at the time were almost as hostile to as they are to the Bush vision of America as democracy-bearer to the world.

Why, even atrocities like the Bombay massacres might well be prevented merely by the existence of the inspirational figure of President Obama—such, at any rate, seems to be the view of Alex Witt of MSNBC who, according to the Media Research Center, professed himself baffled by the attacks coming so soon after the election.

There had been such a global outpouring of affection, respect, hope, with the new administration coming in, that precisely these kinds of attacks, it was thought—at least hoped—would be dampered down.

Was thought by whom? I suspect that, as usual when the media use the passive voice, Mr. Witt only means himself and the other Obamolators in the media. For, less than a month after the election, we were already beginning to see that the media’s tendency to idolize the President-elect was merely the equal and opposite reaction to their inordinate hatred of George W. Bush. Obamolatry was the other side of the coin to Bush Derangement Syndrome—and, we might add, equally fanciful as a description of the way power is exercised in America.

The remarkable thing to me was and remains that neither the Bushophobes nor the Obamaphiles seemed to have the slightest self-consciousness about what I persist in regarding as an embarrassing condition. Two months ago in this space (see “Carefully Crafted Narratives,” The New Criterion, November 2008), I mentioned James Wolcott’s suspiciously unironic-sounding proclamation that “I blame Bush for everything and will continue to blame him (and Vice President Dick Cheney) for everything.” More recently, Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post described himself as a “fellow sufferer” from Bush Derangement Syndrome as unashamedly as the TV personality Chris Matthews—now sending out feelers about running for the Senate from Pennsylvania—not so long ago said a speech by Senator Obama had made a thrill run up his leg. Obviously, if you believe that everything the forty-third president did was wrong, it must be equally easy to believe that everything the forty-fourth will do must be proleptically right—even when he does exactly the same things as his predecessor. This was the inescapable conclusion from the praise heaped by the media on the new president’s new “pragmatism” in his cabinet appointments—which included what would in any other circumstances have been the astonishing volte face of retaining in his own cabinet President Bush’s Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates.

Hardly anyone seemed to remember by that point how central to the early Obama candidacy had been its complete and total opposition to the Bush administration’s defense and foreign policy. The President-elect’s attitude at that time had been essentially the same as that of John Kerry who, when asked in 2004 what he would have done differently, answered “Everything.” A man whose tenure of public office consisted of eight years in the Illinois state legislature and barely two in the United States Senate tried to make up for his lack of experience with appeals to the shock troops of the anti-war Left by smearing his main rivals for the nomination simply for having voted to authorize the administration to wage war in Iraq. What might—indeed, must—otherwise have seemed, therefore, an egregious betrayal of the anti-war forces which did so much to bring him to power made scarcely a ripple in the press. On the contrary, the Obama partisans therein vied with each other to congratulate their hero for it.

Even the few who did protest, at least those in the mainstream media, did so in an almost apologetic tone. David Corn of Mother Jones, for example, was afforded the hospitality of the columns of The Washington Post to mention, with a gentle, Jeeves-like clearing of the throat: “This Wasn’t Quite the Change We Pictured.”

It’s no surprise that many progressives are—depending on whom you ask—disappointed, irritated, or fit to be tied. Sure, Obama’s appointments do represent change—that is, change from the widely unpopular Bush-Cheney status quo. But do these appointments amount to the kind of change that progressives, who were an essential part of Obama’s political base during the campaign, can really believe in? Perhaps Obama is trying to pull off something subtle—a sort of stealth liberalism draped in bipartisan centrism. But it’s understandable that progressives are worried… . For some progressives, Obama’s opening moves may not feel like the change they anticipated. But there’s no rebellion yet at hand. Many are probably holding their breath and waiting to see whether Obama can hijack the establishment for progressive ends.

Hijack the establishment that he himself has put in place? That really is playing a deep game. But when you want to believe as badly as Mr. Corn and a great many others want to believe, I guess it makes sense. More straightforwardly approving was Peter Beinart, writing in Time magazine, who went so far as to reassure his fellow progressives that “it’s precisely because Obama intends to pursue a genuinely progressive foreign policy that he’s surrounding himself with people who can guard his right flank at home.”

Senator Obama may be required by the laws of physics to have a “right flank,” but who knew that it was also right wing?