Here ya go Ollie
For President Obama, the honeymoon is officially over
Wednesday, June 24th 2009, 4:00 AM
One job of journalists is, to borrow a horse racing phrase, to "call the turns" of developing news. Yesterday, the White House press corps called the end of the Obama honeymoon.
By peppering the President with forceful questions on Iran and other big topics and by challenging some of his slippery answers, reporters captured the changing tone in the country. Like the end of a real honeymoon, blind infatuation is giving way to a more accurate view of reality.
The reality is that polls show rising doubt about President Obama's handling of the economy and wide disapproval about exploding deficits. The reality is that even many Democrats worry the White House health plan is messy and unaffordable. The reality is that ranks of independents who voted for him find Obama far more liberal than they expected.
It's also true that many news organizations have embarrassed themselves with fawning Obama coverage and are the subject of growing ridicule, including from Obama himself.
Those facts all probably played a role in the unprecedentedly aggressive tone of yesterday's news conference. More than anything else, Iran - where the President had been a timid fence-sitter while a democracy revolution was blooming, then being crushed by a thugocracy - galvanized the press to probe. Six of the 13 questions dealt with Iran.
"What took you so long?" was the most important one asked of the Obama presidency. It came from reporter Major Garrett of Fox News (where I am a contributor) and put an exclamation point on the President's failure to respond sooner with appropriate condemnation.
Obama finally found his voice yesterday, saying in his strongest language yet that the world was "appalled and outraged" at the violence against demonstrators. And in calling the video showing the death of Iranian icon Neda Soltan "heartbreaking," Obama succinctly expressed the world's emotion.
But in answering Garrett's question with nonsensical insistence he had been consistent, the President damaged his credibility and missed a chance to explain how his thinking has evolved since the June 12 election.
He blew another chance when a reporter asked whether criticism by Sen. John McCain and other Republicans had forced the tougher stance. "What do you think?" he said, getting defensive and saying, "Only I am the President of the United States."
It's a bad habit, a sign of weakness, to pull rank, yet this White House does it repeatedly. Obama brushed back calls for changes in stimulus spending by saying, "I won," and his press secretary said, "We won," just the other day to a question.
The notion that victory carries a blank check is fantasy. Especially in a polarized country with a nonstop media blitz, a mandate must be re-won on every major issue.
Obama knows as much, which is why he has been running a continuing campaign since the inauguration. Whether he's conducting town hall meetings in St. Louis or France or asking for prime-time coverage, Obama uses the bully pulpit and his charisma to aggressively push his agenda.
By and large, the approach has worked. Thanks to full Democratic control of Congress, Obama mostly gets his way, and his personal popularity has remained strong.
But his health plan could be in trouble over the cost and impact, and unemployment keeps rising beyond White House estimates, a fact the President conceded yesterday. He also conceded that stimulus spending has been slower than he wants, which I took as a jab at Vice President Biden's supposed management of the issue.
The result is that the public hasn't seen much economic gain and, combined with the growing debts and prohibitive costs of Obama's health and energy plans, voters are getting significantly more skeptical about the President. Iran added to the doubts.
The press corps gets it. For Obama, the hard part begins now.
mgoodwin@nydailynews.com
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