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For only the second time since the end of February, George Bush used his bully pulpit to grab the lead spot on a network newscast. The President's confession that he has no "magic wand" that could slash the price of gasoline was NBC's selection to kick off the day's news. NBC was alone in treating Bush as the agenda setter. Both ABC and CBS assigned that role to Barack Obama as the Presidential candidate declared himself "outraged" at the National Press Club comments of his longtime minister Jeremiah Wright, calling them "rants." Accordingly Obama qualified as Story of the Day. By the way, on the other occasion in the last two months when the White House topped the news, it was not the President's doing, but the Pope's. Benedict XVI made headlines when he came visiting.

The correspondents on the campaign trail were struck by Obama's unwonted display of emotion. CBS' Dean Reynolds called him "shocked, angered and clearly anguished" while NBC's Lee Cowan noted that "he unloaded on the Rev Wright like never before" calling it a "somber, almost angry response." ABC's David Wright (embargoed link) concluded that "clearly Obama did not relish disowning the pastor." Both ABC's Wright and CBS' Reynolds listed specific issues over which Obama contradicted the minister: the US government did not deliberately infect African-Americans with HIV/AIDS; the Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan is not praiseworthy; the foreign policy of the United States does not amount to terrorism. But it was the Rev Wright's insinuation that Obama had not been sincere in his previous criticisms, "just a political move," as CBS' Reynolds put it, that "really struck a nerve."

Obama's formal repudiation of the Rev Wright's comments warranted analysis in the horse race style on all three newscasts. CBS' Jeff Greenfield explained its necessity: "Wright's occupation of center stage was blocking everything else about Obama." ABC anchor Charles Gibson pointed out to his colleague George Stephanopoulos that the comments that Obama now finds fault with were not newly minted by the minister. Why the outrage now? Stephanopoulos pointed to Wright's high visibility: Obama's campaign "realized this was posing a mortal threat." NBC anchor Brian Williams asked Tim Russert whether any other frontrunning Presidential candidacy had been thus damaged not by his own words but by "an external force," the words of an associate. "Nothing of this magnitude," Russert opined. He called this "public divorce" from a spiritual advisor "unprecedented."

I am sure Russert must be mistaken. This cannot be the crowning example of guilt by association in the history of Presidential politics. Can anyone suggest counterexamples?


Andrew Tyndall 5/1/08 8:14:19 pm

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