Obama's loss of press support

Sure, some of President Barack Obama’s press allies are trying to minimize his administration’s self-inflicted damage. A telling New York Times headline: “I.R.S. Focus on Conservatives Gives G.O.P. an Issue to Seize On.” James Taranto quoted one of his Wall Street Journal colleagues quipping, “Don’t you remember the Washington Post headline from July 1973? ‘President Taped Talks, Phone Calls; Democrats Gain a New Issue.’”

Non-Obamaites, though, are seeing a pattern. David Gelernter last Sept 4 wrote a prescient piece titled “Richard Milhous Obama.” He argued, “No president has seemed this dead to moral imperatives since Nixon at the height of Watergate. So perhaps the Democrats should have one last, long think before they re-nominate Nixon Junior; they might remember that Nixon’s second term did not turn out well.”

Now the Watergate analogy is taking hold. Note this Wonkette headline: “… Wimpy Self-Pitying Richard Milhous Obama.” Do a Google search for more examples, and note that the meme even squirmed once into Washington Post online talk: In a WP Opinions post titled “Richard Milhous Obama?” Marc Thiessen wrote two years ago, “In a television interview last October, President Obama accidentally let slip a key element of his political philosophy: ‘We’re gonna punish our enemies.” (Obama later said he should have used the word “opponents” rather than “enemies.”)