ABC’s Jake Tapper: The Sam Donaldson of the Obamanation
February 21, 2009 | Filed Under 00Publius Contributor, Barack Obama, Government, Corruption, Liberals, Media Bias, News, President, Society/Culture, Uncategorized, Warner Todd Huston | Comments Off
-By Warner Todd Huston
Is it Jake Tapper or Jake Scrapper? I am beginning to think the later as amongst the Obamagobbed media, ABC News’ senior White House correspondent Tapper is emerging as the man ever ready with the pointed question for Obama and his administration. We may even call Tapper the Sam Donaldson of the Obama era.
We all remember the many long years when Sam Donaldson would stand before Republican presidents (oh, and Clinton, too) and their press secretaries and, in that accusing monotone, ask the the most pointed question of the day, don’t we? Of course, we also remember the less than newsworthy subjects he often interjected there, too. Like the question he asked George W. Bush in 2006.
“Mr. President, should Mel Gibson be forgiven?”
Who cares, Sam? And even if we did care, why should this be a question that a president must weigh in on. It’s as bad as the fool Washington Post reporter that recently asked Obama about “ARod.” Would a little relevance be too much to ask when our supposedly hard-edged media are “speaking truth to power”?
So, in that way, ABC’s Jake Tapper is decidedly not like Sam Donaldson. Donaldson was a petulant, self-promoter. Tapper, on the other hand, is about relevance, he’s interested in real news. I don’t think we’ll ever see Jake Tapper asking a president about a silly, drug abusing baseball player. Nor do I think we’ll see Tapper taking thousands in “farming” subsidies like Donaldson did even as he sat in the White House Press Corps cynically attacking the very administration he is getting handouts from.
Still, though, Sam did ask the tough questions. And he wasn’t worried about delicacy, either. So, in the way that Tapper is becoming the man to watch, the man that is ever ready to ask the tough questions, he is the modern day Sam Donaldson. Only a better Donaldson. Tapper’s the more focused, less self-absorbed Donaldson of the Obama era.
Just take today’s “Political Punch” blog posting for instance. In it Tapper recounts the tough language against the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) that Obama used as he campaigned for the presidency last year.
“I will make sure that we renegotiate (NAFTA),” then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said during the Democratic debate in Cleveland, Ohio on Feb. 26, 2008. “We should use the hammer of a potential opt-out (of NAFTA) as leverage to ensure that we actually get labor and environmental standards that are enforced.”
This harsh rhetoric caused Canadian officials to howl in shock during the campaign and forced Obama to quietly send an emissary northward to assure the folks in Ottawa that he wasn’t really serious about attacking NAFTA.
Tapper notes that all the harsh anti-NAFTA talk is suddenly completely gone from President Obama as he visits our closest trading partner. Tapper also notes the disparity between campaign rhetoric and that of administration.
Today’s discussion point: Are we supposed to act as if things politicians say during primaries are irrelevant and meaningless? Are we supposed to just accept as fact that politicians say things in the heat of the moment that they don’t mean and thus we should just collectively self-induce amnesia?
Ouch. Ipso facto, Obama is a liar.
Nuggets like this are a mainstay in Tapper’s “Political Punch” blog. And he’s no slouch in the White House Press room, either. Take the February 13 press conference where Tapper made Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, look like a complete fool over the discrepancy between Obama’s claims that the CEO of Catipillar promised to hire workers back if the stimulus bill passed and what that same CEO ended up saying later.
This one caused even Rush Limbaugh to go wide-eyed in admiration for Tapper’s questioning.
Earlier, on February 5, Tapper went after Gibbs on the failure of the Obama administration to live up to Obama the candidate’s claims of wanting transparency in the White House. Tapper did a tap dance on Gibbs with the following exchange:
Tapper: He doesn’t believe in transparency?
Gibbs: Did you have another more-pertinent question?
Tapper: I think that’s fairly pertinent to your Cabinet nominees and whether not they pay their taxes and whether not they have speaking fees with all sorts of industries you are supposed to regulate, I think that’s fairly pertinent, you don’t?
Not long after this impressive Press Corps debut, Tapper gave an interview himself seeming to take his fellow journalists to task for having been so far in the tank for The One.
“There’s a big lesson for all of us — not just reporters, but the nation — in the need for a vigilant press that questions the decisions our leaders make… I certainly don’t think that it’s the job of any journalist to make the presidency work.”
This quote made Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters wonder if Tapper was give the back of his hand to MSNBC’s Chris “Tingle” Matthews? It was Matthews that said in November that he felt it was his job to make Obama’s presidency work. “I want to do everything I can to make this thing work, this new presidency work… Yeah, it is my job.” (Also reported on NewsBusters.)
Here is what Matthews said not long ago.
So, in ABC’s Jake Tapper, here’s a man that takes his journalism seriously. Well, at least he takes the charge for journalists seriously because he also has a wicked sense of humor. His “Political Punch” blog posts are also full of cutting humor.
Jake Tapper will be the man to watch as the Obama Administration moves forward. That is, as long as Obama allows him to keep asking questions at pressers. At this rate, that may not last long!
Whatever way the Obama administration will come to view Tapper, it is a fact that he is not interested in being pointed merely for the sake of pointedness (like Donaldson always was). Tapper is a man on the hunt for the facts, not one looking to become the toast of the town – unless he becomes the toast because of that search for the truth, I suppose. Tapper is looking to get to the meat of the actions of the White House and neither ARod nor Mel Gibson will sidetrack him in pursuit of that story.
And finally, before the lefties out there lose their tiny little minds over how Jake Tapper is suddenly the “friend of the right” or a “sell out” — and believe me, they have already been saying these idiotic things — before the left goes imagining that conservatives think Tapper is “their guy” in the White House, let me assure you of one thing: As a conservative myself, I am just as afraid of how Tapper would do his tap dance on a Republican president as he has done and is expected to continue doing on Obama. I am 100% sure that as senior White House correspondent Tapper would be making me wince as a supporter of a Republican in the White House as he does of supporters of Obama now. So, my admiration for Tapper does not extend to any supposed favoritism for my political druthers on his part. My admiration for him extends to his dogged, serious, and principled devotion to his job and THAT, ladies and gentlemen, makes him of a different breed than his fellow Obamagobbed journalists.
I can’t wait to see how he does as we go forward. It ought to be interesting.
____________
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, Human Events Magazine, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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