The MSM, Barack Obama, Saul Alinsky, and the price of denial

In 2008, the American electorate engaged in a little fantasy. Encouraged and abetted by the mainstream media, many voters clicked their heals three times and whispered, “There’s no one like Barack Obama.”

They were right. There is no one like Barack Obama, which is to say the man they helped elect on the promise that he would bridge the partisan divide and restore fiscal solvency was a fraud. His inability to lead and his unyielding radical worldview have plunged the nation more deeply into debt than at any previous point in history and his fallback solution—to bleed the rich (aka, job creators)—has increased the ideological animus manyfold.

Some in the elite media have awakened to this sad truth. No less a one-time booster than New York Times editorialist Maureen Dowd lamented in her column on Sunday:

Times have been bad and sad, and The One did not turn out to be a messiah, just a mortal politician who ruefully jokes that his talent is hitting the ‘sweet spot’ where he makes no one happy, neither allies nor opponents.

The man who became famous with a speech declaring that we were one America, not opposing teams of red and blue states, presides over an America more riven by blue and red than ever.

The man who came to Washington on a wave of euphoria has had a presidency with all the joy of a root canal, dragged down by W.’s recklessness and his own inability to read America’s panic and its thirst for a strong leader.

Strong words, but not all of Dowd’s liberal-left peers have seen the light. There are some, like Meet the Press host David Gregory, who continue to click their heels and dream. Here is Gregory on Sunday’s program, closing out an interview with Newt Gingrich (h/t Noel Sheppard, Newsbusters):

Let me end with this, Mr. Speaker. Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida whose nomination is highly sought after … has called on all of the candidates to have a very positive tone and think about the independent voter as we move forward in the general election. I want to play something you said about President Obama last night and ask if you think you’re consistent with that admonition. Watch.

In the video, which is here, Gingrich tells a crowd:

The founding fathers of America are the source from which we draw our understanding of America. He draws his from Saul Alinsky, radical left-wingers and people who don’t like the classical America.

Gregory’s question suggests that he views Gingrich’s comment as mudslinging—as an attempt to tarnish a man whose politics he considers mainstream.

It might be instructive for David Gregory and his fellow believers in myth to listen to an NPR interview with Alinksy biographer Sanford D. Horwitt, recorded on the occasion of Alinsky’s 100th birthday in January 2009, ten days after Obama’s inauguration. The segment is titled “Saul Alinksy, the Man Who Inspired Obama.” In the exchange, Horwitt, a Chicago liberal, explains to host Alex Cohen with more than a modicum of pride how Obama is the living embodiment of the ideals Alinsky outlined in his Rules for Radicals:

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