Reality has entered the arena

Juan Williams has an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal titled, “Judge Obama on Performance Alone,” calling on the media to start treating President Obama fairly instead of favorably.  Williams writes,

It is neither overweening emotion nor partisanship to see King’s moral universe bending toward justice in the act of the first non-white man taking the oath of the presidency. But now that this moment has arrived, there is a question: How shall we judge our new leader?If his presidency is to represent the full power of the idea that black Americans are just like everyone else—fully human and fully capable of intellect, courage and patriotism—then Barack Obama has to be subject to the same rough and tumble of political criticism experienced by his predecessors. To treat the first black president as if he is a fragile flower is certain to hobble him. It is also to waste a tremendous opportunity for improving race relations by doing away with stereotypes and seeing the potential in all Americans.Yet there is fear, especially among black people, that criticism of him or any of his failures might be twisted into evidence that people of color cannot effectively lead. That amounts to wasting time and energy reacting to hateful stereotypes. It also leads to treating all criticism of Mr. Obama, whether legitimate, wrong-headed or even mean-spirited, as racist.This is patronizing. Worse, it carries an implicit presumption of inferiority. Every American president must be held to the highest standard. No president of any color should be given a free pass for screw-ups, lies or failure to keep a promise. . . .To allow criticism of Mr. Obama only behind closed doors does no honor to the dreams and prayers of generations past: that race be put aside, and all people be judged honestly, openly, and on the basis of their performance.President Obama deserves no less.

Williams is right, and his point is a critically important one—even more important, perhaps, than he contends.  The sort of “affectionate if not fawning treatment from the American media” that Senator Obama received during the campaign was helpful to him as a candidate, because as a candidate he was insulated from the broader reality of the American situation.  He didn’t have to put anything on the line to deal with the challenges this country faces, nor did he have to accept responsibility for anything that went wrong, because he wasn’t in the arena where those challenges are actually faced—that fight belonged to President Bush, leaving Senator Obama free to critique from the stands without having to deal with it himself.  He had a different campaign to fight, one in which perception is what matters most, and the adulation of the media could affect that in meaningful ways to his benefit.Now, however, the situation is very different; it is now President Obama’s task to be “the man in the arena,” and he is no longer free merely to comment, criticize, and suggest—he must act, and his actions will have direct and significant consequences.  As Jennifer Rubin writes,

The economy will either improve or it won’t. President Obama will either control and focus the multiple voices in his administration and prevent too many cooks from spoiling the soup (or deadlocking the administration) or he won’t. And he will either continue George W. Bush’s record of post-9-11 U.S. safety and post-surge progress, or he won’t. Those events can only be spun so much. But unemployment rates, Dow Jones averages, al Qaeda terrorists and even Congress don’t much care whether he is the embodiment of the mainstream media’s hopes and dreams.In the end, what matters most is what the President does—and what results he achieves.

This is truth, and it means that from here on out, the media aren’t really going to be able to do Barack Obama any favors; they can do a lot to destroy a president, as they did with George W. Bush, by skewing their reporting toward bad news and spinning things in negative ways, but they can’t create good news that isn’t there, and they can’t keep bad news from getting out.  No matter how hard they try, “the MSM has to get around to reporting what everyone else knows to be the case sooner or later (as they did on Iraq).”  They can only delay that point—they cannot keep it from arriving.That being the case, the one real effect they could have by continuing to fawn over Barack Obama is to foster and feed a feeling of overconfidence in the White House—which couldn’t possibly be good for the president or his administration, and could quite possibly be fatal.  Far better for them to start asking the tough questions and digging out the hidden stories now, when there’s much less on the line.  I don’t expect them to attack President Obama the way they attacked President Bush—indeed, I’m glad they won’t; what they did to our 43rd president was dishonorable and repulsive, and I would not care to see it repeated to anyone—but they need to get back to being what they claim to be, “a proud, adversarial press speaking truth about a powerful politician and offering impartial accounts of his actions.”  As Juan Williams says, President Obama deserves no less.