December 2007: Look Closely. Obama Certainly has aged. Us, too.
Entire cyber-forests have been leveled in praise and condemnation of a man who in all likelihood will be president-elect when the sun comes up on Wednesday morning, so there’s not a whole lot more worth saying.
In that spirit — and because your feckless . . . er, fearless correspondent is running on empty, herewith a review of what he wrote about Barack Obama over the past year as the impossible begat the unpredictable, which in turn gave birth to the extraordinary.
In the end, whether Obama gets the nomination will have less to do with his ability to move beyond those symbolic Boomer battles than the reality that the mainstream media manipulates campaign coverage because of its willingness to be manipulated by the campaigns.
Along with the deeply corrosive influence of big money on politics, the incestuous relationship between the MSM and Old School politicians and the ability of both groups to create the illusion that presidential politics are by and for the people, by golly, are the most screwed up aspects of this quadrennial ritual.
So will Barack Obama do any better than Eugene McCarthy did? My instincts tell me that the answer is a resounding “no.” (11/9/07)
[Frank] Rich notes the MSM’s inability to get into a groove on Obama has a lot to do with him being of mixed race and the built-in story line that fact provides despite the fact that who his parents are means far less to the average voter than the media could possibly imagine. This has not stanched the flow of stories to the effect that Obama may be too black for whites and too white for blacks.
But I think it runs much deeper than that: Beyond his electability — which is very much an open question — Obama is the only candidate on either side who is truly a fresh face at a time when voters are desperately craving one.
And the MSM has been incapable of understanding his appeal because it is incapable of understanding that. (12/3/07)
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