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The three network news anchors and the President of the United States arrived in London. Barack Obama was there for the G20 Financial Summit, a meeting of world leaders on global economic stimulus and financial regulation convened by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The anchors were there to cover the talks. The run-up to anti-capitalist protests in the City of London on April Fool's Day and Thursday's one-day summit was the Story of the Day and the lead item on ABC and CBS. NBC led from Detroit, where General Motors grapples with its looming bankruptcy.

The White House press corps went along on the London trip too. CBS' Chip Reid and NBC's Chuck Todd both itemized Obama's agenda. Todd called it Obama's "first overseas trip" as President, presumably relying on the technicality that one does not travel over a sea when one goes abroad to Canada. "Obama hopes to use his immense popularity with the European public to persuade European leaders," was how Todd put it. CBS' Reid concurred that the President is "enormously popular here in London and all throughout Europe."

ABC's man at the White House focused on the G20 agenda. "A showdown awaits," Jake Tapper warned. "Germany and other European countries are leading the pushback" against the President's proposal for a coordinated stimulus for the global economy. Tapper quoted an unidentified White House aide as "invoking the Great Depression as an example of what can happen when the world's industrialized nations do not come to an agreement to combat an economic crisis." The European counterargument was that they had "already passed stimulus packages and with more extensive social spending programs these countries do not want to take on even more debt." On CBS, anchor Katie Couric reminded us of the contrasting history lessons of the C20th: the United States remembers the Great Depression and seeks government stimulus; Germany remembers pumping "massive amounts of cash into the economy…they fear inflation more than almost anything."

ABC's Tapper also listed the protests by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France that the Obama-Brown plan to regulate financial capitalism is not strong enough and a proposal that a new international currency replace the "once almighty" dollar as the global standard. CBS' Couric predicted that Obama's meetings with the leaders of China and Russia may be "the most challenging and delicate task for a President with limited foreign policy experience." She concluded that the United States "is watching its importance in the world decline significantly."


Andrew Tyndall 4/1/09 9:49:10 pm

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