Why Obama risks losing control of his message

Matt K. Lewis Senior Contributor
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As President Obama defensively declared the other week, reports of his political death are exaggerated. Republicans, I agree, should be careful to avoid premature triumphalism.

Still, one does get the sense that something different is afoot here, if for no other reason than that some intellectually honest liberals are beginning to call for resignations and firings.

This happens in second terms. It’s probably hard for some younger readers to fathom, but there really was a time when Chis Matthews would utterly destroy Bill Clinton every single night on “Hardball.” It went on for years.

A few years later, conservative journalists — having mostly served as Republican toadies during his first term — began to turn on George W. Bush. It started as a trickle. They stood up against the Harriet Miers nomination. And there was a dustup about transferring U.S. ports to a Dubai firm.

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I’m sure few that mini-scandal now. But at some point, it became safe for center-right journalists to join in with their MSM brethren in criticizing Bush.

Here’s how it starts. You write something critical, hit “publish,” and then nothing bad happens to you. In fact, you might even be rewarded with media attention (yes, sometimes the pioneers take the arrows, but the early bird also gets the worm.)

Even reporters who have been dining out on White House access for years begin to realize this president is a lame duck, and it’s time to start thinking about my legacy now.

That’s how administrations lose control of the message. People stop fearing them. And then, it becomes a competition (the free market at work!). Journalists begin trying to one-up each other — to see who can do the better job of actually holding the powerful accountable. It’s all about incentives. It becomes a smart business decision to be against the president.

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To be sure, the mainstream media won’t be as gleeful in criticizing Obama as they were in destroying Bush. But this is a business. Obama, it appears to me, is dangerously close to losing the narrative — and I don’t mean temporarily. There may come a tipping point.

How did this happen? It may be that the AP scandal hits a little too close to home for journalists. As Charles Krauthammer noted on Fox News’ “Special Report” Wednesday, “I think what he understands is that he is losing his constituency, that’s the media,”

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Let’s take my good friend Maegan Carberry, for example. She’s a smart, young, new media mind who has previously worked as Arianna Huffington’s chief of staff, and as communications director for Rock The Vote.

This is all to say that she’s no ultra-conservative. Yet here she is calling out Jay Carney over the Justice Department’s seizure of AP phone records.

When pressed for an explanation, she responded:

Meanwhile, liberal radio and Current TV host Bill Press is encouraging Eric Holder’s ouster.

And …

And though the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank stops short of calling for Holder’s ouster, his latest column is titled, “Eric Holder’s abdication.”

I’m sure there are others. Yesterday, for example, Fox News’ Shep Smith observed, “If [Obama has] lost Jon Stewart…I’m just saying…” This is in no way an exhaustive list, but it is interesting anecdotally — to me, at least.

Matt K. Lewis