Obama cozies up to MSM -- cowers at Fox

By Michael Bresciani

The President apparently does not take seriously the charge to keep your friends close, but keep your enemies even closer. Over the weekend September 19, 20, 2009 he will be doing his own sales work for the healthcare plan shunned by millions of Americans and doctors across the board. He has conspicuously left Fox News out of the media push.

The poor showing at Townhall meetings and the mousey performance of notables like Arlen Specter at those meets has prompted the Prez to do his own PR blitz with the main stream media that is both in the White House and as some say some in his hip pocket.

Fox News has never lead the President to believe he's 'got a friend' in Fox but they have shown him the respect that the office of President invokes even if the President himself does not. Perhaps he has saved himself from questions that he couldn't answer any better than Sen. Specter but avoiding Fox speaks volumes about his strategy and his very character.

Avoiding the frontlines of the battle may be interpreted as cowardice rather than strategy by many Americans and Barack Obama is gambling against that possible perception and its consequences.

The appearance with Letterman on Monday is a familiar move reminiscent of his campaign strategy but David's credulity has also been clipped down to size by the recent indignities leveled at Sarah Palin and the subsequent apologies and fanfare accompanying that snafu. If charm and a bit of laughter can sell a health care plan then why not, in the world of late night TV there is no tomorrow anyway.

Large audiences of people who treasure all that is goofy cannot be expected to weigh the facts too carefully but they too will be heard bellowing when the bill comes for the Obama plan. The government accounting office, the admitted miscalculations and a bungling bureaucratic administration of health care provisions will surely sober up the revelers in due time.

Facts and figures are sure to be avoided in keeping with all that has gone before in Obama's concerted effort to 'just getter done.' Facts like those reported in a recent IBD Tipp poll that clearly indicate that while the American Medical Association may endorse the Obama plan doctors in general do not. In that poll over 45% of doctors or two out of three of them have said they will quit the medical profession if the health care bill is passed.

The day has long passed in which we need to hear more of Barack Obama's intentions. It is abundantly clear what he wants. What is still obscure is just how he plans to pull it off and at what expense. Unfortunately America is already approaching recessional bankruptcy and it takes no Wall Street wizardry to see that whatever the Prez is proposing is something we cannot now afford.

Will somebody please tell this President that frugality and postponement of spending is part of the American psyche, tradition and her very success. Fiscal responsibility is not cowering away from the inevitable even though avoiding Fox may very well be.

© Michael Bresciani