-By Warner Todd Huston
Today at 1:30 PM, President Obama has deigned to hold an honest-to-goodness, question-taking press conference. I guess the President took to heart the plaintive plea of ABC’s Jake Tapper who asked Obama not to be a stranger as the Prez exited his last presser on August 20.
But that was just a walk on, guest shot, a surprise to the press. Obama’s last scheduled, solo press conference was all the way back on March 6.
Despite claiming that he’d be the most open, transparent president ever, Obama hasn’t been as forth coming with the Old Media establishment as other presidents. In fact, he’s been chided by the media since he first became president for keeping them at arm’s length.
The latest scolding Obama took over his shyness was in early in October when Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank looked up the numbers and noted that in the last four years, President Obama “has worked assiduously to avoid being questioned, maintaining a regal detachment from the media and other sources of dissent and skeptical inquiry.”
“Towson University political scientist Martha Kumar, who keeps a running tally of Obama’s media appearances, tells me he has had 19 solo news conferences in the White House as of Sept. 30. That compares to 26 for Ronald Reagan at the same point in his presidency, 59 for George H.W. Bush, and 31 for Bill Clinton. Obama had more formal news conferences than George W. Bush (13), but Bush engaged in many more informal Q&A sessions with reporters: 340 at this stage in his presidency to Obama’s 105. (Clinton had 585 at this point, the elder Bush had 309 and Reagan had 135.)”
This President just does not like to be questioned, even by his sycophantic press corps.
The absurd thing is that this media loves him so unconditionally, one wonders what he’s been afraid of these last four years? Who would ever expect a member of the U.S. media to ask a tough question of The Won? Well, besides Jake Tapper, of course.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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