Tag Archives | President Obama

There is one subject that most politicians avoid: talking about the media. Most spend most of their time positioning themselves for media attention because most seem to need and rely on media visibility.

The media provides their political oxygen and, hence, explains why they spend so much time spinning their words with hired press secretaries, advisors and consultants.

In many ways, being on the air validates their role if not their existence. . Hence, many are always scrambling to be interviewed for TV news and on Sunday shows. Media visibility is a key tool in the permanent campaigns most pols run for their reelections and to move up the political ladder.

Much of the money they spend so much time raising goes right back into the media for commercials.

As a result, they usually don’t discuss their experiences or opinions perhaps out of fear of antagonizing media outlets by suggesting that they don’t operate responsibly.… Read the rest

Doug Mills/NYT (Fair Use)

What a difference a term in office makes.

Look at the picture (at right) yesterday of the President becoming president again in an oval office ceremony surrounded only by his family swearing an oath administered by a Chief Justice he should be swearing at.

Today what fans turn up will cheer him on, but the die seems to be cast.

He is really alone, shorn of so many of the hopes and expectations his supporters invested in his candidacies.

Even his advisors are distancing themselves. So much for any sense of a grand crusade or plan for change!  He is a reactor, not an enactor, a conciliator, not a combative fighter.

We know him now, even if we wish we didn’t. Illusions keep disillusion away, but not forever.

Even his advisors are slipping away, leaving him to relay on managers and national securocrats  He may not have sold out–because he was always this way—but he surely bought in.… Read the rest