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The three networks had radically different reactions to Barack Obama's State-of-the-Union-style address to a Joint Session of Congress in primetime on Tuesday. CBS gave it the full treatment, leading with the President's emphasis on the economy and following up with an analysis of his rhetoric and then an up-close-and-personal profile of the "no quitter" teenager showcased at the speech's climax. ABC decided not to lead with the speech--choosing its own polling on the recession instead--but covered both Obama's agenda and his Twittering audience of legislators. NBC took the opposite tack, treating the address as yesterday's news. It led with the continuing woes of high finance and did not assign a single report to the speech itself.

CBS' Jim Axelrod contrasted Obama's warnings of "economic crisis" during his lobbying for fiscal stimulus legislation with his "optimism" on Tuesday night: "We will rebuild. We will recover and the United States will emerge stronger than before." Axelrod resorted to history for analogies to Obama's "mood and message." He likened the fearful talk to Jimmy Carter's "gloomy rhetoric" and his confidence to that of Ronald Reagan, stating that Presidential confidence is required to inspire employers to hire and consumers to spend. The problem with this argument is that Reagan's recession was deeper and longer than Carter's. Axelrod himself mentioned that Reagan was confronted by "even higher unemployment."

The White House correspondents at ABC and CBS came away with different agendas after listening to the President. CBS' Chip Reid concluded that Obama's emphasis was on the economy, reporting on his proposals for bank regulation, fiscal stimulus and the housing market. ABC's Jake Tapper heard "the most ambitious--perhaps the word is even audacious--agenda in generations." He highlighted the President's Biblical Day of Reckoning phrase to envision universal healthcare plus global leadership in college graduation plus limits to carbon pollution from greenhouse gases. George Stephanopoulos of ABC's This Week handicapped the chances of passage for all that audacity: education reform and deficit reduction look possible; healthcare and climate change less so. "The idea is to pick off different groups of Republicans around different issues to get those 60 votes they need in House," he reported, calling it "a roving coalition strategy."


Andrew Tyndall 2/26/09 8:06:52 pm

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