Frank James on Pickler

I think Frank James does a very good analysis on the Pickler piece that won Daily Dolt below:

Again, it strikes me that this is what politicians do, or allow to have done in their names, even first-class ones. Abraham Lincoln did a stint of rail splitting before becoming an affluent railroad lawyer but he probably could have been accused today of allowing supporters to exaggerate that part of his biography in calling him the “rail splitter.”

But the larger point is that after being charged with creating the Obama phenomenon, the Washington press corps is now doing stories that I guarantee the Obama campaign will be hoping most people ignore. These stories are inescapably negative.

Whether Obama is the MSM’s Frankenstein monster is arguable. Millions of people voted for him in Illinois. The man certainly has the larger-than-life charisma needed to occupy the White House successfully. The John F. Kennedy is definitely not-far fetched in this regaed.

Obama really seems comfortable with the media glare and adoring crowds, making him a kind of anti-Nixon. Part of his success, so far, I believe is that people tend to like other people who are comfortable in their presence.

Americans also like politicians who speak to the better angels of their nature, which Obama certainly does with all of that Lincolnesque, high-toned language of his that, yes, at times comes across as platitudes. Come to think of it, Lincoln’s better-angel line is really a platitude, isn’t it?

My take is even more cynical in that I don’t think it matters what Obama does in terms of receiving criticism like this because the press is going to do it anyway. The measure of the campaign is can they take the criticism and react to it creating a net positive.

What’s most interesting about the Tribune and the Swamp is that despite being a part of the DC corps and being an influential paper, since it’s not East Coast or West Coast, they are somewhat distinct from the herd (Sun Times has a similar nature with Lynn Sweet).  No news organization is perfect, but I often find the Trib and Sun-Times reporters to be far better than most of the beltway crowd.  An interesting test case will be to analyze Jeff Zeleny’s work for the Trib and how he’s doing one year from now at the NY Times.