PrintNovember 13, 2008
Obama's own personal CREEP
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post made the The Committee to Re-Elect the President, or CREEP, the target of their dogged probe of the corruption of the Nixon White House. They published stories about slush funds, and campaign shenanigans, designed to discredit Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern as the candidate of "acid, amnesty and abortion." Their stories earned them a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, and the everlasting adoration of other reporters who made it their mission in life to portray the corruption of (nefarious conservative) politicians.
Now, decades later, CREEP is back. But this time, rather than being a target of the press, CREEP is the press. On election night, after news that Barack Obama had won enough electoral college votes to be president, reporters and analysts on cable TV were talking about how Obama was going to be unbeatable in the next election, in 2012. Obama hadn't been inaugurated, the votes hadn't even been officially counted yet, but this hasn't stopped the press from being Obama's own, personal CREEP. This is truly unprecedented.
We all know about the press bias in this election -- the links of Obama to Marxists, like Kenya's Raila Odinga, and terrorists, like his buddy from the neighborhood, Bill Ayers, and other enemies of the U.S. that were downplayed by the establishment media. We know about how the establishment press tried to chase Hillary Clinton out of the Democratic primaries, and, now refuses to "follow the money," or the alleged improprieties of the Obama campaign fundraising apparatus which, mysteriously, somehow, turned off the mechanism on its credit card collection efforts that verified whether the donor was living in America. This kind of corruption is all a big yawn to the Fourth Estate these days. Too much hope and change to write about, don't you know.
But the re-election coverage -- before the first inaugural -- is really something to behold.
This week, the CREEP continued its propaganda campaign, well honed during the last two years. The Associated Press published a poll saying that 72 percent of Americans have the "confidence" that Barack Obama will revive the economy. I'm amazed that AP admits that, in their parallel universe, somehow, 28 percent of Americans don't agree with that assessment of things not yet done, and of policies not yet proposed. According to the AP poll, the public also seems "willing to wait" on the promised tax cut for "95 percent of Americans" that Obama discussed during his campaign. Where there was once advocacy journalism, now there is advocacy polling, and an semi-official, state media, supporting the correct candidate.
Maureen Dowd of The New York Times was on CNN this week, also offering effusive praise for the yet-to-be president, who will most assuredly be re-elected. She related a story about how she shared a cab ride with a foreign visitor this week, and the foreign visitor remarked that since Obama's election, the weather seemed much better, the clouds were much lighter, and everyone was so much better off than they were less than two weeks ago.
With press like this, who needs fundraising? Who needs another $600 million effort to re-elect Obama? He hasn't even been inaugurated, but with the press serving as his CREEP, why even bother with another election?
Gene J. Koprowski is an Emmy nominated writer-producer (2008) for FoxNews.com.
