What a difference a Fox interview makes! Like many Kossacks, my first exposure to Obama's interview this morning with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday was reading through the live-blogging and comments on this thread (Thanks, mselite!). Apart from some early anxiety over how smart or dumb a move this was on the part of Obama, the overall consensus appeared to be positive. (But then, we Obama Kossacks are just mindless cultists...)
However, look a little further afield, and you'll see that many liberal bloggers are having babies. (No, I'm not going to visit anti-Obama sites.) What are some of them talking about, and why have they gone cold on Obama?
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Lefty bloggers like Greg Sargent and Matt Stoller are incensed, Matt more than Greg, but they're both referencing an earlier statement by a senior Obama adviser that noted how the campaign was aware that Fox was instigating a smear campaign against Obama, and that the senator intended to "take Fox on".
By Sargent and Stoller's reading, this patently didn't happen. As Greg reads it, the Obama adviser was talking tough and promising to attack Fox. Greg's conclusion?
Well, it didn't happen. Obama definitely pushed back hard on some of Chris Wallace's questions, but at no point did he draw attention to Fox's spreading of lies about him or critique the network in a general sense.
According to Sargent, Obama was given a perfect opportunity to do so when Wallace brought up the flag pin nontroversy, but he let it slip through his hands. What a klutz!
Matt Stoller is even more upset, writing simply:
Obama is sucking up to Fox News, and beyond that, the campaign operative who said he would [take Fox on] just out and out gave false information.
You can't trust the Obama campaign, they will lie to you to promote right-wing institutions.
Play the 30 second clip to see Stoller imagining how Obama presumably sells the netroots down the street by appearing on (gasp!) Bill O'Reilly. Stoller's expression of disgust in the final second of the clip says it all.
So Sargent and Stoller agree: the Obama campaign are dirty rotten liars, and Stoller even says they'll sell you out given half a chance. He didn't even have to mention that Obama did a Sista Soulja on Daily Kos. Heavens to Murgatory!
Well, that's a bit dramatic, and needless to say I don't agree.
First, to anyone who has followed Obama, it was obvious going into the interview that Obama simply wasn't going to eviscerate Fox News -- and that this was in fact a pipe dream of progressive bloggers who have internalized a model of politics in which the left and the right are incompatible and the name of the game is all attack all the time. Read eugene's take on this -- he says it much better than I can.
Second, I think they've both read too much into what the senior Obama adviser said. This is what Sargent reported the adviser as saying:
We are clear-eyed about Fox’'s role in the dissemination and amplification of Republican talking points this election. They have been the tip of the spear when it comes to repeatedly broadcasting some of the most specious of rumors about Obama. He is going on their Sunday show to take Fox on, not because we have any illusion about their motives or politics in this election.
Sargent and Stoller read the phrase "take Fox on" as being an expression of aggression, but I don't see that at all, and didn't when I read it pre-interview. Taking Fox on could simply mean showing up, or pushing back on right-wing framing, which Sargent admits Obama did:
Again: Obama was not obliged to take on the network. But either way, the bottom line is that he didn't do it. Partly because of this, the interview -- which was a solid performance by Obama -- was also a victory for Fox.
Again, Sargent seems to want a zero-sum outcome: Obama was supposed to win, and Fox was supposed to lose. But think how that would have played to the Fox audience. That's right, the angry (perhaps uppity) black man/liberal. Point-scoring. Everything that Obama has said his campaign is against.
Obama is not Bill Clinton, an attack dog with flashes of anger. To a man like Obama, "taking Fox on" can mean something completely different than what Sargent and Stoller assume it means.
Ironically, Obama's reluctance to rip and shred Chris Wallace is related to his reluctance to go negative on Hillary. It's odd that liberal bloggers who were quick to denounce ABC's obsession with process and conflict are now rapping Obama's knuckles for not putting a fight. Guys, he keeps saying that he'll fight when it matters, and the Wallace interview did not matter.
Why didn't it matter?
For one thing, I don't think that Obama went on specifically to gain votes -- and if he did, the pickings would have been slight. I think he went on for reasons that Stoller and Sargent, who are locked into the zero-sum view of left-right politics, can't see.
First, he got a second chance at the same questions that he was asked at the ABC debate. This time, he had his answers all lined up, and got in some good lines. As Sargent admitted, he put in a "solid" performance.
Second, he introduced himself to Republicans who haven't been watching the Democratic Primary. Sure, they won't vote for him, but if they see that he isn't a horned socialist foaming at the mouth, and knowing how skittish they feel about John McCain, they may feel more comfortable about sitting out the general election.
Third, as many people have pointed out, he gets to show he's tough in his own way. This is a very new kind of toughness for the American public to accept, and the more exposure it gets, the better. That's why Obama needs to show it now, and to an audience he doesn't normally reach.
That's why the Fox interview -- while it carried risks -- was a good move.
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UPDATE: Title changed because people seem to loathe the phrase "to throw sb under a bus" with the heat of a thousand suns.