Obama Destroys the Media BS That The American People Have Lost Confidence In Him

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Julie Pace of the AP asked the president, “When you look at polling, talk to Americans, they seem to have lost confidence in you, trust in you. Your credibility has taken a hit, obviously the healthcare law was a part of that, so do you understand that the public has changed their view of you over this last year?”

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The president answered, “But Julie, I guess what I’m saying is that if you measure this by polls, my polls have gone up and down a lot through the course my career. I mean if I was interested in polling, I wouldn’t have run for president. I was polling at 70% when I was in the U.S. Senate. I took this job to deliver for the American people, and I knew and will continue to know that there are going to be ups and downs on it. You’re right, the healthcare website problems were a source of great frustration I think in the last press conference. I adequately discussed my frustrations on those.”

Pace presented her question as the polling being an independent measure of how the American people are feeling at a given point in time, but what polling also measures is the degree and tone of the media coverage. It isn’t a coincidence that President Obama’s numbers have dropped after weeks of endlessly negative media coverage of the healthcare website.

The media has a comfortable arrangement going. They shape the perception of the American people, then they use polling, which they conduct, to treat the political climate as something that is independent of their own coverage.

I don’t believe that the American people have lost confidence in President Obama. Politics are comparative. Obama’s number doesn’t exist in a vacuum. All of the bad Obama polling that the media loves to hand wring about also shows that the president is four to five times more trusted than the Republicans.

Obama was right. No president should be guided by polling. The job will have lots of ups and downs over the course of a term or two. The question that was asked was bogus, and designed to fuel the narrative that the Obama presidency is doomed.

The president shot it down, and for a moment the media’s claim of a presidency in crisis got put in its place.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association