Culprits, Records, Jobs & The Next Debate

Victor Davis Hanson: 

The real culprit for Obama’s disastrous night is not entirely Barack Obama, but rather the media training-wheels who assured Obama for years that he was riding on his own; when they came off last night, he immediately fell, and for some reason we are supposed to be surprised?

 

Dana Milbank says something similiar, at the Washington Post:

.... Obama has set a modern record for refusal to be quizzed by the media, taking questions from reporters far less often than Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and even George W. Bush. Though his opponent in 2008 promised to take questions from lawmakers like the British prime minister does, Obama has shied from mixing it up with members of Congress, too. And, especially since Rahm Emanuel’s departure, Obama is surrounded by a large number of yes men who aren’t likely to get in his face.

This insularity led directly to the Denver debacle: Obama was out of practice and unprepared to be challenged....

.... 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.)

Obama hasn’t held a full-fledged news conference at the White House since March. After a Cabinet meeting in July, a reporter tried to ask him whether new gun laws were needed after the Colorado shooting — and Obama brushed off the inquiry with a joke....

 

VDH gets the last word... about the next debate:

For Obama to win the next debate, Romney will have to be uncharacteristically bad, Obama will have to be uncharacteristically good, and the moderator will not only have to be engaged but also unashamedly hyper-partisan. All of the above can happen, but it is unlikely.

 

Makes sense to me. And if it weren't for that bizarre jobs report this morning, I might even feel a bit cheered up.

Yes, the U-3 unemployment rate fell to 7.8%, the first time it has been below 8% since January 2009. But that’s only due to a flood of 582,000 part-time jobs. As the Labor Department noted:

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) rose from 8.0 million in August to 8.6 million in September. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.

.... The broader U-6 rate — which takes into account part-time workers who want full-time work and lots of discouraged workers who’ve given up looking — stayed unchanged at 14.7%. That’s a better gauge of the true unemployment rate and state of the American labor market.

 

"Read more" James Pethokoukis at AEI.

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

VDH nails it again. The "media training-wheels" (kudos to VDH for the terrific metaphor) are apparently feeling some unacknowledged guilt for Obama's failure; that's why they're working so hard to manufacture excuses for him. The funniest excuse I've seen so far is the one now spreading across the internet with the speed of a super-virus: Just before the start of the debate, Romney removed an object from his pocket and set it on the rostrum in front of him; the Romney campaign insists it was a handkerchief -- and there are tapes galore showing him using it later in the debate to wipe his nose. But the Leftie screwballs who aren't satisfied with that explanation insist the object was a cheat-sheet -- and that Romney won the debate by referring to it at crucial intervals, thereby winning the debate by cheating. Just the kind of dastardly behavior you'd expect from depraved monster who's already an income-tax felon and the murderer of a woman he didn't even know. How dare this wretched cur have the temerity to claim that he was just rubbing a handkerchief across his nose! To use the old cliche, Yael, you can't make this stuff up.