In a blatant attempt to ensure that President Obama’s second term is a success, CBS Political Director and Slate magazine chief political correspondent John Dickerson penned a personal manifesto advising the President to “go for the throat” of his Republican opponents. Dickerson argues this strategy will be not only effective in accomplishing the President’s goals, but will make his second term memorable if he wishes to “transform American politics.”
But the story is more in who is advising the president, and not what he advised. Dickerson may be a political correspondent for Slate, but he is also an employee of CBS News, and is in fact their political director. Any veil of objectivity from Dickerson at CBS vanishes when one reads his biased manual to defeat the GOP conveniently laid out in the pages of Slate.
“Washington’s partisan rancor, the size of the problems facing government, and the limited amount of time before Obama is a lame duck all point to a single conclusion: The president who came into office speaking in lofty terms about bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP,” Dickerson wrote. “If he wants to transform American politics, he must go for the throat.”
After blaming the poor economy for President Obama’s less than accomplished first term, he advises the president to skip the promised bipartisanship niceties of his first term and instead “pulverize” his opponents. “Whether he succeeds in passing legislation or not, given his ambitions, his goal should be to delegitimize his opponents,” he advises.
Dickerson suggests the president should first weaken the GOP by pointing out its flaws and extreme elements, and then establish an agenda that “clarifies” his battles for the second term. One of his wishes is to see that President Obama avoids the dreaded “lame duck” lackluster second term that historically plagues incumbent presidents that win reelection.
With a two page article that reads like an NFL playbook aimed to dismantle the Republican Party, how could any news consumer ever again assume that Dickerson is anything but a partisan hack desperate to ensure his beloved president is at least mildly successful during his remaining time in office?
Dickerson’s piece provides conservatives with one more example of liberal media bias proving their battle for media fairness is even more an uphill climb.
h/t to Brit Hume for pointing out that Dickerson is not only employed by Slate, but also by CBS.
