Burning Bush

WHAT IF BUSH HAD DONE IT? POLITICO’s Josh Gerstein: “A four-hour stop in New Orleans, on his way to a $3 million fundraiser. Snubbing the Dalai Lama. Signing off on a secret deal with drug makers. Freezing out a TV network. Doing more fundraisers than the last president. More golf, too. President Barack Obama has done all of those things … What’s remarkable is what hasn’t happened. These episodes haven’t become metaphors for Obama’s personal and political character — or consuming controversies that sidetracked the rest of his agenda. It’s a sign that the media’s echo chamber can be a funny thing, prone to the vagaries of news judgment, and an illustration that, in politics, context is everything. Conservatives look on with a mix of indignation and amazement and ask: Imagine the fuss if George W. Bush had done these things? And quickly add, with a hint of jealousy: How does Obama get away with it? ‘We have a joke about it. We’re going to start a website: IfBushHadDoneThat.com,’ former Bush counselor Ed Gillespie said. ‘The watchdogs are curled up around [Obama’s] feet, sleeping soundly.’ … Bush got grief for secret meetings with the oil industry, politicizing the White House and spending too much time on his beloved bike. …

“For Bush, the [media narrative] was that of a Big Business Republican who rode the family name to the White House, so stories about secret energy meetings and a certain laziness, intellectual and otherwise, fit neatly into the theme, to be replayed over and over again. Obama’s story line was more positive from the start: historic newcomer coming to shake up Washington. … Democrats find the complaints of Obama ‘getting a pass’ hard to stomach in light of the way the press treated Bush — particularly on the single biggest mistake of his presidency, relying on the faulty intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. Now, Obama’s aides say, the positive coverage simply reflects the fact that their efforts are succeeding. ‘As our administration makes progress on the agenda that Washington has ignored for too long, we expect we’ll get some news coverage of that progress that we like and some tough coverage that we don’t,’ White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. ‘It’s not unlike the New Orleans Saints, who are getting lots of good coverage of their perfect record so far — certainly better coverage than the … Redskins — but it doesn’t mean the Saints have liked every story that’s been written about them since training camp. It goes with the territory.’”