CBSNews.com: During the primaries a number of Clinton aides said that the worry about Obama is that he wouldn't be able to handle the “Republican attack machine” that would hammer any Democrat in a general election. Do you think that warning was prescient?
Mark Penn: I think it is a very strong campaign that has survived considerable ups and downs. And we had a considerable number of sideshows during the primaries as well. I think the big difference now is that his campaign is not working against other Democrats.
He is working against a Republican and swing voters willing to vote for a Republican. And those are a very different pool of voters with very different concerns. They don't care what the New York Times had to say. They don't care what Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd have to say. They don't care what "elite" opinion is.
I think here the media is on very dangerous ground. I think that when you see them going through every single expense report that Governor Palin ever filed, if they don't do that for all four of the candidates, they're on very dangerous ground. I think the media so far has been the biggest loser in this race. And they continue to have growing credibility problems.
And I think that that's a real problem growing out of this election. The media now, all of the media — not just Fox News, that was perceived as highly partisan — but all of the media is now being viewed as partisan in one way or another. And that is an unfortunate development.
CBSNews.com: So you think the media is being uniquely tough on Palin now?
Mark Penn: Well, I think that the media is doing the kinds of stories on Palin that they're not doing on the other candidates. And that's going to subject them to people concluding that they're giving her a tougher time. Now, the media defense would be, "Yeah, we looked at these other candidates who have been in public life at an earlier time."
What happened here very clearly is that the controversy over Palin led to 37 million Americans tuning into a vice-presidential speech, something that is unprecedented, because they wanted to see for themselves. This is an election in which the voters are going to decide for themselves. The media has lost credibility with them.
But what does he know? He's probably just bitter...
4 comments:
When asked if Palin was going to be made available to the media for questioning, McCain's campaign manager felt so comfortable in his capacity to distance Gov. Palin from having to articulate a policy position or respond to objections that he smugly said, "A couple of weeks." I thought to myself (at that time), there were around eight weeks until the election and a candidate for the Vice Presidency is going to be allowed to make her speeches ridiculing Obama/Biden, touting her accomplishments, and explaining to the country why McCain is the right man for the job in front of "friendlies" and other conservatives without having any of this subjected to criticism and questioning by those in the media.
This discourse, this fiction, about "media bias" and their "assault on Palin" has been so well created by the Right that the McCain campaign can literally, and in all confidence, say to the American people, everything she says will go unchallenged; it must be assumed to be true; her veracity ought to be taken as a given.
We must separate, of course, the MSM from the blogosphere. Bias is present on both sides, but to argue that Palin is subject to certain challenges by the MSM that others haven't received is erroneous and without merit.
I'm sorry Alex but it's impossible to argue that Palin has been treated the same as everyone is treated.
Even some in the MSM have pointed out where it's gone to far. John Edwards affair was reported by the National Enquirer over a year before the MSM finally picked up on it.
A false accusation that Palin had an affair, is up the next day in the MSM after being reported by the Enquirer. Then the accusation that she was really Trig's grandmother?
The amount of vitrol in the media out there directed at her can not be seen as fair or balanced, even using Fox News guidelines...Even some Democratic women who would never ever ever vote for Palin have stated this.
That's grossly overstated because, again, you're collapsing the MSM into the blogosphere. Where the MSM has admitted to reporting on things not necessarily relevant is engendered from the lack of access to Gov. Palin by the McCain campaign. The story about Trigg has been spoken about far less than Sen. Obama "being Muslim," for example, both in the blogosphere and the MSM. Gov. Palin's affair is literally news to me.
This conversation follows the Right's tactic to shelter Gov. Palin within the confines of her gender, which thereby perpetuates this endless cycle of fictionalized sexism. Which, unfortunately, has the consequence of harming the legitimate cause of challenging our gender-structured society. It is, therefore, not impossible to claim that she has been treated fairly given the context of the McCain campaign’s resistance to allowing her to defend her own positions. Indeed, the Obama campaign’s efforts in Alaska to uncover Gov. Palin’s positions, etc. has been labeled “sexism,” which is absurd given that opposition-investigations are part-and-parcel to political campaigns today. However, this absurd reaction is protected from being called such because of these discourses about the media and Gov. Palin. It’s a job-well-done by the Right.
Alex,
I am talking about the MSM not bloggers though it's hard to totally eliminate blogging since the MSM has used them as a way to report some of the Palin stories that demonstrate what are over the top. Mark Penn is a Clinton staffer, so you are trying to also state that he's wrong.
Several examples, Attacking Palin for not aborting her son.
Insulting and sexist if this was written about Clinton, women would be outraged.
Another example where a variety of insults are levied, including being a "republican blow up doll."
I could go on...when Obama first announced he was running for president, did he face the same negative reaction from the media? Or let's go back even farther, when he got the nation's attention during that speech at the DNC in 2004, did the media start looking into him then?
Even my own favored candidate John Edwards, while not being able to compete with the media covering the "two historic firsts" was protected by the MSM who knew there were rumors out there about him and they were not deemed to be newsworthy.
Focusing on Palin is expected, trying to argue the way it was done was done objectively? I'm sorry, but I agree with Mark Penn and the many other professionals out there who have stated their opinion.
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