I was thinking of giving Obama a progress report on his first 100 days, but I felt that it is far too premature to judge his actions and their consequences. All in all, Obama has strong-armed Congress with his domestic policies and weak-armed tyrants and terrorists with his foreign policy. Since his domestic policies involve the expansion of federal government, increased spending, and increased taxation (during a recession), I disagree with both internal and external policies. Though I think that my restraint in judging Obama prematurely is a virtue, the mainstream media has no such illusions. The judgments passed these first hundred days have reinforced the view that the current president has enlisted the media as a personal PR machine.

Here’s a few examples:

1) Newsweek opens one article with “he’s in league, so far, with FDR and LBJ” and another article is titled “The Halo Holds“

2)On MSNBC, Howard Fineman delivers a roughly 900 word ode to the president’s “Coolness” without even mentioning the word “policy” (not once, look it up if you don’t believe me).

3) CNN’s John King barely mentions anything that Obama has done wrong and cites the various legislative proposals rammed through Congress by a one-party controlled government as major accomplishments. The broken promises on bipartisanship, on transparency, the foreign policy weakness, and the increases in taxes are not referenced.

The list is longer of course, with a lot to come since the actual 100-day will be hit on April 29th. The media has mainly been concentrating on certain Republican remarks rather than Republican policy proposals: seizing on Rush Limbaugh’s “I hope he fails” comments and making a quiet mention of Republican budget proposals to counter the borrow-tax-spend Democratic budget. The media worried more about how Republicans would back ever-increasing government and more taxation, instead of asking whether these things were inherently good in themselves.

On top of that, the media scarcely mentioned the specifics of Obama’s original proposals that included so much un-stimulative special project spending showing that the Democrats were more interested in scoring political points and paying special groups that helped get them into power than with actually stimulating anything. On the other hand, the media keeps repeating over and over the White House line that the Stimulus Package was full of infrastructure spending while in reality it is not so bold. Caterpillar Inc. CFO Dave Buritt says that China is doing much better with regards to infrastructure spending, approximately three times what the US is spending.

The media’s “objectivity” was woefully missing during the campaign and seems to have continued into the presidency as well. Unfortunately, the only thing that will shock the media out of the Obama-hypnosis is a major mistake. While I hope that does not happen, it just goes to show that in today’s world: “image is everything.”

-AG