Honeymoon over?

By Nestor Mata
MANILA
After 14 days in the White House, President Barack Obama told the American people in television interviews, in very un-presidential terms, he “screwed up” in his choice of two Cabinet appointees and economic programs.
The new POTUS referred to the implosion of two of his nominees for Cabinet positions who “forgot” to pay taxes, one of whom for not paying taxes on a car and driver. They withdrew their nominations.
Over and over, the two-week old president confessed before anchors of NBC and CNN television networks at the Oval Office. “I think I messed up? I screwed up!”
Before Mr. Obama recanted, he had committed errors on what the rapier-sharp Maureen Dowd, Op-Ed columnist of The New York Times, called “the helter-skelter” $817-billion stimulus bill he wanted the US Congress to approve as his solution to stem the staggering economic crisis now raging in America and the rest of the world.
“Mr. Obama should have,” Dowd wrote, “slashed with a red pen all the provisions that looked like caricatures of Democratic drunken-sailor spending.”
Still, after all his mea culpas, “I’m sorry, so sorry,” and sustaining the worst public embarrassment of his new presidency, Mr. Obama must have been startled no end when he read that a press critic claimed it was the mainstream media that “elected” him as the first black president of America.
In a blistering expose, CBS veteran journalist Bernard Goldberg wrote in his new book titled “A Slobbering Love Affair” about how the US media elected Mr. Obama.
In the book subtitled “Forbidden Love Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media,” Goldberg demonstrated in great detail “the pretense of objectivity and slavish support for Obama by media sectors,” and he even cited “the outrageously slanted news reports of The New York Times.”
Thomas S. Winter, editor-in-chief of Financial Affairs, also added those media sectors “not only surrendered their integrity and objectivity but could even have endangered our democracy.”
(Oh, incidentally, doesn’t this remind you that there are some in our media sectors that have been compromised, too, in favoring a corrupt government and letting it get away with murder?)
Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal wrote: “Obama’s serious and consequential policy mistake is that he put his prestige behind not a new way of breaking through but an old way of staying put. This marked a dreadful misreading of the moment. And now he’s digging in. His political mistake, which in retrospect we will see as huge, is that he re-moralized the Republicans. He let them back in the game.”

Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post wrote satirically: “After Obamas miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks!”
Even two columnists of the NY Times, Gail Collins and David Brooks, are talking about the tide of public opinion swinging away from Obama.
When Collins noted “a dose of sadness” in Brooks’ columns about the “messy” stimulus bill, Brooks riposted that “it’s because I’ve been robbed of my honeymoon.” Other writers from Washington Post to the Philadelphia Inquirer, he noted, are critical of the “hodgepodge” nature of Obama’s economic bill. “This is the 21st century,” Collins reminded him. “Things move fast. If you get to honeymoon for a week, you’re lucky!”
All this makes one wonder if we’re now watching the beginning of America’s disenchantment with Obama’s nascent presidency. And is the honeymoon between Obama and the America press coming to an end, in less than a quarter of the way into his first 100 days at the White House?
Well, if it is, it certainly didn’t take long!
***
Talk about presidential travels. In his first 100 days, President Obama is flying in Air Force One to Europe. Unlike her new boss, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has decided to travel on her first official trip to Asia, including Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and China.
I wonder why Hillary is bypassing the Philippines, which is supposed to have “close relations” with the good old USA?

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