At a time when the press corps is competing to find the most creative ways to fawn over President Obama, I really have to hand it to Richard Stengel.
The managing editor of Time has a new book out on Nelson Mandela, released last week, and he goes to great lengths to compare the two leaders.
“The parallels are many. I went to see Mandela during the Democratic presidential primaries last year and asked him whom he preferred, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. He smiled and then waved a finger at me in the universal gesture of, You’re trying to get me in trouble. He would not answer,” Stengel wrote.
Stengel continues: “His restraint was characteristic. That self-control, that omnipresent filter, is something the two men share.
“And while it took twenty-seven years in prison to mold the Nelson Mandela we know, the forty-eight-year-old American president seems to have achieved a Mandela-like temperament without the long years of sacrifice.”
Huh. So the fact that Mandela refused to endorse Obama proves that the two are remarkably similar? (That is, provided you disregard Mandela’s 27 years of sacrifice and genuinely transformative achievements.) Now there is obvious hyperbole at work here, but let’s just try to narrowly follow the logic here — or the lack thereof.
For one thing, Obama has never demonstrated characteristic restraint when endorsing another politician.
Stengel’s book came out Tuesday. On Friday, the Chicago Tribune ran a gigantic front-page headline about Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, who’s now running for Obama’s old Senate seat: “$20 Million in Loans to Felons.” Obama has been an enthusiastic booster of Giannoulias.
The loans in question were to the mob. Giannoulias denied approving the loans at his family-owned bank, then the Chicago Tribune reported he personally oversaw loans in 2005 to Michael Giorango, a convicted bookmaker and pimp.
Giannoulias then denied the money had gone to finance mob casinos, but the Tribune later confirmed that as well. Now Giannoulias’ family bank is going bankrupt and taxpayers are on the hook.
In 2006, Mike Madigan, chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party and speaker of the Illinois state house, announced he wouldn’t take Giannoulias’ calls. “My history in politics, if you were alleged to be connected to the mob, you were done,” Madigan said.
But Giannoulias has been supported by Obama long after the mob connections were public knowledge. Giannoulias visited the White House and spoke to Obama last month. On March 9, press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Giannoulias has “support and the backing of the White House.”
Aside from Giannoulias, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel bragged how he and Obama “were the top strategists of [Rod] Blagojevich’s 2002 gubernatorial victory.” I don’t expect they’re so eager to claim credit for enabling Blagojevich’s federal corruption charges.
In 2007, Obama endorsed Chicago Alderman Dorothy Tillman’s re-election. Tillman has been accused of mismanaging charity funds, and is best known in Chicago for her odd demand that she not be served by white waiters.
And even before that, Tillman was known for, according to the Associated Press, waving “a .38-caliber, snub-nosed, nickel-plated pistol” during a dispute in a Chicago ward redistricting meeting. “Finally, Obama is willing to stand up for a gun owner,” quipped National Review’s Jim Geraghty of Obama’s Tillman endorsement.
I could go on. Whether Obama is like Mandela is so absurd it’s besides the point. Stengel’s bigger problem afflicts much of the fourth estate. They would rather report shallow observations about the president they find reassuring than the facts that would make their readers uncomfortable.
Mark Hemingway is a editorial page staff writer for the Washington Examiner. He can be reached at [email protected].
