Obama's Nixonian Paranoia on Display in San Francisco
As Paul Rahe reported this past spring, the White House banned one of The San Francisco Chronicle's reporters, Carla Marinucci, after she recorded an embarrassing incident at an Obama fundraiser with her cell phone. The White House then threatened retaliation against the paper if it dared to report the ban. Undeterred, The San Francisco Chronicle called the White House out on its bullying tactics.
And yesterday, when President Obama was in San Francisco for a fundraiser, the White House exacted revenge on The San Francisco Chronicle by barring all local press from the event. But the editors of The Chronicle hit back hard.
...there is almost a Nixonian quality to the level of control, paranoia - and lack of credibility - this White House has demonstrated on the issue of media access to President Obama's fundraisers.
Bay Area reporters will not be allowed inside the W Hotel today when the president meets with hundreds of contributors paying $7,500 or more to attend. Only Washington-based journalists were allowed in the pool - continuing a disturbing trend by this White House to severely limit access to fundraisers. Even former President George W. Bush, hardly a champion of transparency, allowed local reporters to cover his fundraising events.
Fundraisers are not private events in this post-Watergate era. Contributions are a matter of public record, and the public has a right to know what is being said to and by the president. Local journalists are better positioned than their Beltway brethren to recognize who is there - and why.
In 2008, The San Francisco Chronicle endorsed Barack Obama as "the right president for these troubled times." But 2012 will shape up to be the paper's proving grounds. Will an outlet that so zealously champions freedom of the press advocate a president who will go down in the history books as running the most opaque administration since Nixon?
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Aug '10
Re: Obama's Nixonian Paranoia on Display in San Francisco
I'm not so sure I agree with this statement.
For me, it's a case that illustrates the difference between a "good" and a "right".
It is good for fundraisers to be open to the press, but I don't think it's a right.
After all, if it was a right, then they would have to let anybody in, and they wouldn't be allowed to charge $7,500 a plate.
May '10
Re: Obama's Nixonian Paranoia on Display in San Francisco
Nah. It'll still support President Obama. No question about it. A) It's a newspaper in a major city. And B) The major city is San Francisco.
Apr '11
Re: Obama's Nixonian Paranoia on Display in San Francisco
Misthiocracy
I'm not so sure I agree with this statement.
For me, it's a case that illustrates the difference between a "good" and a "right".
It is good for fundraisers to be open to the press, but I don't think it's a right.
After all, if it was a right, then they would have to let anybody in, and they wouldn't be allowed to charge $7,500 a plate. · Oct 26 at 12:08pm
It's a symptom of just how ingrained the habit of "rights talk" has become. But then, you are quoting the SF Chronicle.
Perhaps a more accurate way to say what they really should have said would be something along the lines of, "Contributions are a matter of public record, especially in the post-Watergate era, and the public has an interest in what is being said by the president to his contributors. The founders recognized the role of a free press for just this reason."
Dec '10
Re: Obama's Nixonian Paranoia on Display in San Francisco
Diane, you're unclear on the nature of the Chron's criticism. This isn't an objective criticism of the type that would be used to compare two candidates and make a selection between them. This is the criticism by a child of its parent, aimed at getting the parent to modify its behavior. Whether the parent takes the criticism to heart or ignores it, the child won't stop loving the parent or go seeking an alternative.
What the Chron editors may not yet have grasped is that they made a fundamental mistake about their relationship: Obama is not the parent, but the child. Even if they figure that out, however, their love for him will still be unshakeable at its root.
Re: Obama's Nixonian Paranoia on Display in San Francisco
Stuart Creque
Diane, you're unclear on the nature of the Chron's criticism. This isn't an objective criticism of the type that would be used to compare two candidates and make a selection between them. This is the criticism by a child of its parent, aimed at getting the parent to modify its behavior. Whether the parent takes the criticism to heart or ignores it, the child won't stop loving the parent or go seeking an alternative.
Good point, Stuart. The same analysis goes for the throngs of OWS protesters or the demonstrators in SF yesterday who were protesting the Keystone Oil Pipeline.
May '10
Re: Obama's Nixonian Paranoia on Display in San Francisco
Local KGO radio talk-show host and Obama supporter Gene Burns last night really ripped into Obama over this. Burns called Obama "the bag-man in chief" and reminded the taxpaying listeners that they paid about $58,000 per hour to have Obama fly out here on Air Force One to collect a cool million while ignoring one of his most ardent bases of support, along with ignoring the violent civil unrest just across the bay in Oakland. At least one liberal out here gets it.
Dec '10
Re: Obama's Nixonian Paranoia on Display in San Francisco
"Well, we ain’t got any," George exploded. "Whatever we ain’t got, that’s what you want. God a’mighty, if I was alone I could live so easy. I could go get a job an’ work, an’ no trouble. No mess at all, and when the end of the month come I could take my fifty bucks and go into town and get whatever I want. Why, I could stay in a cathouse all night. I could eat any place I want, hotel or any place, and order any damn thing I could think of. An’ I could do all that every damn month. Get a gallon of whisky, or set in a pool room and play cards or shoot pool." Lennie knelt and looked over the fire at the angry George. And Lennie’s face was drawn in with terror. "An’ whatta I got," George went on furiously. "I got you! You can’t keep a job and you lose me ever’ job I get. Jus’ keep me shovin’ all over the country all the time."
Oct '11
Re: Obama's Nixonian Paranoia on Display in San Francisco
This is just as unethical as when Hooters opens a new restaurant and brings in the national "A Team" waitresses for the first month. After that you’re stuck with the local girls you went to high school with and gas-station quality food…
Err… not sure anymore how that is a metaphor for Obama, other than the hollow disappointment part.
May '10
Re: Obama's Nixonian Paranoia on Display in San Francisco
I whole-heartedly agree. What a candidate promises in exchange for campaign cash reflects directly on his performance in office, the setting of federal policy and the way tax payer funds are spent. Just because he is in campaign mode, it is not a private event.
In all reality, outside the living quarters and taking private counsel inside the of the White House, I'm not sure the President has that much private time.
Oct '10
Re: Obama's Nixonian Paranoia on Display in San Francisco
Yes.
Got any questions that are actually difficult to answer, Diane? :)
Re: Obama's Nixonian Paranoia on Display in San Francisco
The San Francisco Chronicle will find a way to trash the Republican candidate and argue that, regrettably, they have to conclude that Obama is the less bad choice.
Still, the childishness of the Obama administration is breathtaking. This is meant to be a lesson for the other media outlets: "Toe the line, or we will take revenge." It does remind one that this crowd came from . . . Chicago.
Re: Obama's Nixonian Paranoia on Display in San Francisco
The Nixon-Obama comparison deserves further thought and exposition. There's a good case to be made that Nixon was the most "statist" chief executive between FDR and Obama. EPA, OSHA, Title IX, wage and price controls -- no president since has accumulated a record quite this bad. Until Obama, who is trying his best. Like Obama, Nixon believed that the vigorous use of state power to bring about "desirable" ends was imperative. Once you believe that your own desired ends are morally "right," and that the use of state power to bring them about is both effective and necessary, you begin to see any actions or opinions that threaten to impede your actions as "immoral" and therefore illegitimate. And thus, in the sphere of politics, the use of any power available to you to silence or crush dissent is merely an extension of the use of state power to bring about your desired ends.
Nixon and Obama, of course, come from completely different social, cultural, and political "tribes," and I think would have despised each other had they ever met -- but they have a lot more in common than either would care to admit.
Oct '10
Re: Obama's Nixonian Paranoia on Display in San Francisco
I only disagree with labeling it childish. It’s all too grown-up. Chicago thugs and community organizers know that if you want discipline you have to enforce obedience. There has to be a consequence for straying from the party line. The connection between goals and actions, between power and purpose, makes this the opposite of childish. Compulsion, force and the threat of force are the indispensible ingredients of Liberal Fascism, as Jonah Goldberg well documents in his so-titled bestseller.
Apr '11
Re: Obama's Nixonian Paranoia on Display in San Francisco
Remember how in the last campaign he uninvited the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times reporters from the campaign plane the last 2 weeks, ostensibly because they did not endorse him?