It's Good to Be King

Victor Davis Hanson on the Leader of the Free World:

Think of the following: the Fast and Furious scandal, the VA mess, the tapping of the communications of the Associated Press reporters, the NSA monitoring, Benghazi in all of its manifestations, the serial lies about Obamacare, the failed stimuli, the chronic zero interest/print money policies, the serial high unemployment, the borrowing of $7 trillion to no stimulatory effect, the spiraling national debt, the customary violations of the Hatch Act by Obama cabinet officials, the alter ego/fake identity of EPA head Lisa Jackson, the sudden departure of Hilda Solis after receiving union freebies, the mendacity of Kathleen Sebelius, the strange atmospherics surrounding the Petraeus resignation, the customary presidential neglect of enforcing the laws from immigration statutes to his own health care rules, the presidential divisiveness (“punish our enemies,” “you didn’t build that,” Trayvon as the son that Obama never had, etc.), and on and on.

So why is there not much public reaction or media investigatory outrage?

Because the media love him, of course. He is The One. Hanson has a lot of other reasons at the link and it's worth your time to read them in full, but for me the key one is this:

The media is not just overwhelmingly hard left, but hard left with a chip on its shoulder that its own views are neither accepted by the majority nor usually implemented by government.

All the above scandals and embarrassments would have ruined a Bush, given that such mishaps would have been headlined daily  in the New York Times (e.g., “VA, Benghazi, AP, NSA, IRS overwhelm sinking Bush administration”) or Washington Post (“Bush Cabinet Paralyzed by Scandal”).

For the media, Obama is not Jimmy Carter or even Bill Clinton whom they overwhelmingly supported. He is quite different — the first gold-plated liberal president since FDR, and probably the last for a while, intent on fundamentally transforming the United States, by redistributing income and accumulated wealth, and recalibrating the American profile abroad.

The media believes that both are socially just and long overdue. Why then nitpick a president on details, when his intentions are noble? 

Yes, sometimes you'll have a little apostasy just for show, which seems to be Ron Fournier's beat as of late, but in the main we'd rather not talk about such things, because, well, we'd rather not. It's a false equivalence, you see, because no matter what The Leader of the Free World does, it's certainly less icky than what some knuckle-dragger from the benighted precincts might attempt. And in the end, oversight is only required for people who require it. Back to Hanson:

The well-off are indifferent to the Obama record, interested only in its symbolic resonance. Doctrinaire liberalism resonates mostly with the very wealthy. We see that by the voting patterns of our bluest counties, or the contributions of the very affluent. In contrast, Republicanism is mostly embedded within the middle class and upper middle class, while liberalism is a coalition of the affluent and the poor.

This has been the case for a very long time now -- I've heard the term "limousine liberal" for my entire life and we have the Ford Foundation and the rest of the old money philanthropic structure bleating for justice that doesn't necessarily extend to the shopkeepers and the entrepreneurs who are grasping for a lifestyle that they aren't qualified to live. It's always amused me when people tell me that Republicans are the party of the rich. That hasn't been true for a long time.