The New York Times on Obama and Deval -- Assume Nothing, Question Everything

Every solid reporter and editor knows the key to journalistic success: assume nothing and question everything. For successful business executives, it's a survival mantra. Educators call it critical thinking, the ability to see an advertisement, hear a presentation, read a news story with a questioning eye on what's behind the claims being made, who are the sources, who benefits, who does not, what's the context, what are the implications of the story -- in other words -- the Colbert truthiness of it all.

The venerable NYT runs a front page, above the fold, story about Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick's problems in his first two years in office. It's a legitimate evaluative survey for every governor of any state. And every governor has to go through it -- in their state's newspapers.

But this story is in a national paper from New York, not Massachusetts. If critical thinking is applied, there are some reasonable questions to ask. Why this governor? Why now? Why on the front page of this most powerful national newspaper?

The 'why this Governor' is answered in reporter Abby Goodnough's opening. It's because he is "....a surrogate for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, his friend and fellow gifted orator.....He dazzled voters with a message of hope and change." Oh, by the way, he's black.

Hmmmm.

The story goes on to detail the battles this governor is having with the state's Speaker of the House, who has more power with the legislature than the newbie governor. The article gives the overall negative impression that Deval is losing the battle due to insufficient governing skills.

So, again, why this Governor? Why now? The implied logic and conclusion seems clear - guilt by similarity. Deval is Obama. Obama is all new, change and eloquence with questionable governing skills. Oh, and he's black Really?

Critical question: Why did the editors chose this governor to compare with Obama? Why not compare Obama with Vermont Governor Timothy Kaine? He's a newbie Governor in a state that hasn't elected a Democrat since 1964. He was all about change. He's also an Obama supporter. Why not him?

Has the NYT done a similar story comparing Hillary Clinton to a female governor like Arizona's Janet Napolitano or Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, both of whom are articulate, are change agents, and neither having an easy time with unfriendly legislatures? Oooops, they're both supporting Obama.

If you subtract the elements of fractious legislative relations, change agent, new voice, articulate, what's the only thing left to compare between Obama and Deval? Is it because they're both black? Perhaps the venerable New York Times is not above playing the race card. This is a critical question that needs to be asked.

Comments

[hopelessobama]

and comparisons to deval are far closer then the absurd comparisons to JFK. i fell down laughing when they said obama was a new JFK.

[Teritt]

The NYT is just doing what it does best - trying to form the opinion of it's readers to align with their opinion - remember the leadup to Iraq? And keep in mind which candidate they endorse.

[MizJ]

We in Massachusetts elected Deval Patrick because he offered "change". We got....nothing. He is a big loser and he now busy shopping his bio for a book publication. The one hope we have is that if Obama Baby gets to go to the WH he takes Deval with him. Couldn't get much worse. We also survived Mitt here as well.

[TommyMcCarthy]

HuffPost's Pick

I'd like to thank Tom Alderman for this article.

Usually, when one or another of Sen. Obama's, staffers, associates, or admirers (NEVER the Sen. himself), employs the now-very-familiar "reverse race baiting" strategy....there is at least SOME possible ambiguity about the statement or action about which the feigned outrage is being expressed.

Mr. Alderman, however, has provided an absolutely clear, unadulterated example of discovering racial bias where there is none......zip........zero....nada.....naught.

The Goodnaugh piece is PRECISELY, and forthrightly about the political similarities between Patrick and Obama....yet Mr. Alderman manages to make sinister the banal..... through the use of the ALSO now-too-familiar (and highly literate) interrogetory (and I quote).........."Hmmmmm".............

As in "Hmmmm...could it be because they are BLACK??"

Alderman wonders whether.... "...the venerable NYT might not be above playing the race card"....and calls that "a critical question."

I have another. We needn't WONDER if the not-quite-as-venerable Mr. Alderman is above playing the REVERSE "race card". The fact that he is NOT is manifest.

My question is...........Hmmmm.......I wonder if certain of Obama's supporters, like Mr. Alderman, so often play this particular card because their "deck" contains no other kind..........................................tm

[finethnx]

If you check out TheRealist! profile, he appears to be nothing more than a pretender and agitator. Neither Dem is his candidate.

[villastrangiato]

Silly, it has nothing to do with their race and everything to do with their "agenda". Why didn't the New York Times question the lying and the runup to the Iraq War? Why didn't it question Eliot Spitzer's abilities and background? Why did it hire one of the poorest excuses for a human being in the last half century - William Kristol? Why? I'll tell you why. The answer should be obvious to anyone with a fifth grade education or better.

IT'S BECAUSE THE NEW YORK TIMES - LIKE MOST SO CALLED "MEDIA" OUTLETS, HAS ITS OWN AGENDA. AND USUSALLY, NEGATIVE PRESS GETS RESERVED FOR THOSE PEOPLE WHO HAVE A DIFFERENT AGENDA OR VIEWPOINT THAN THAT OF THE EDITORS AND MEDIA BOSSES - WHETHER YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT A SMALL LOCAL RAG OR CNN OR THE "VENERABLE" (YEAH RIGHT) NEW YUCK TIMES.

[RichLiberal]

" Is it because they're both black? Perhaps the venerable New York Times is not above playing the race card. This is a critical question that needs to be asked."

I think the question that needs to be asked is whether this Tom Alderman is just another Obama operative using reverse race-baiting as a tool to attack the Clintons.

The relationship between Obama and Patrick is much deeper than even this NYT article implies. Here is some obvious stuff reported by the Obama-backing Boston Globe:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/02/12/bay_state_voters_know_their_limits/

And even this does not go into the fact that Patrick is from South Chicago, the political home of Obama and a key component of the Kennedy political machine.

[RichLiberal]

The fact of the matter is that both Patrick and Obama are front men for the Kennedy political machine whose most visible operative today is David Axelrod whose campaign apparatus has worked for Patrick Kennedy in Rhode Island since 1994 and was responsible for concocting the campaign of hope and change that along with Kennedy Massachusetts political operatives installed Patrick as governor of Massachusetts.

Little did we know at the time that this was simply a dry run for the Obama campaign which is the Kennedy strategy to stop Hillary Clinton from taking her legitimate role as leader of the Democratic Party.

It is no coincidence that after Hillary's startling victory in NH that Kennedy took the low road and with operative James Clyburn launched the Clintons are racists campaign that ended up giving Obama 3rd world-like 90 percent majorities of the black vote thru the southern states.

This Kennedy connection is the key ingredient missing in this otherwise relevant NYT story.

Obama is a pure product of the Chicago political machine which is a major branch of the Kennedy national political machine.

This is a race between CLINTONISM and KENNEDYISM. Hillary and Barack are just the fronts for these two important political movements in the Democratic Party which appear to be in a fight to the finish.

[RichLiberal]

Kennedy Clyburn MLK racism campaign against the Clintons connection:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2008/01/25/statesman_or_hatchet_man/

[MizJ]

If what you posted is true (and I have no reason to doubt you) it makes a lot of sense now.

[hopelessobama]

oh and obama wasn't lifting speeches from kaine, he was stealing them from deval. they also are both harvard law graduates with civil rights backgrounds and little governing skills. they are very much alike, and america will suffer the same glaring failures that massachusetts has on the state level thanks to deval.

[MizJ]

Agreed. Deval is a big nothing so far. And he succeeded Mitt which you would think be easy. Not so. He has been largely absent and is now touting a bio for publication. We in MA want him to go away.

[hopelessobama]

they wouldn't compare him to vermont governor tim kaine, because tim kaine isn't the governor of vermont, he's the governor of virginia.....idiot.

[nomobull]

is he still a govenor

[DepartmentalAsset]

Obama cannot win unless Hillary quits and McCain surrenders. Waiting for someone to step up and tell Hillary its over and McCain he's too old is not leadership. Obama won't win. That's not a racist diatribe or an emotional outburst. It's sober assessment of the situation.

[nomobull]

stop buying the spin

[BlueBoomer]

Why compare him to Deval Patrick?...DUH!

The two are so symbiotically linked that Obama was given a quick look then yet another media pass for lifting much of his speech invoking MLK, JFK, etc. directly from a Deval Patrick speech.

Their explanation was that they were almost like family, which apparently is supposed to explain why it was OK not to attribute those passages, while Joe Biden was driven from the 1988 campaign and reminded of it this time around, FOR DOING THE SAME THING...only it didn't involve a "brother" in his case, just someone he frequently quoted and forgot to attribute ONCE.

Look, both of our Democratic candidates are crucially flawed... I fear what I/we DON'T know about Obama, and am not thrilled about what I/we DO know about Hillary... But I'll vote for whichever is the nominee just to keep the Repubics away fromt the AG's office and the SCOTUS...

I just wish we had the BEST choice, like Joe Biden... Wouldn't this be a different campaign if the media hadn't ruined it?... Oh, for what could have been...Instead: ??????

[MizJ]

They did not give Biden a chance, nor any of the other candidates running for that matter with the exception of the two we have now. Biden had it all, experience being number one. And we are asked to go with a senator with two years in office who only got there because he beat Alan Keyes for God's sake! Biden or Dodd carried more experience and background than either of these two and he is gone. Sorry for us.

[Tumult]

Reading the article though I saw that I agreed with all the legislation that Deval had tried to get through and that the House Speaker shot down. I also thought that the House Speaker sounded alot like a Republican with a D next to his name, undermining the will of the people when they elected Deval, and if this continues handing the highest office to that state back over to the Republicans. And that is a similarity I see with Hillary.

And I agree. I thought the article was an underhanded attack on Obama. Funny how the media that is in the tank for Obama pursues every attack line against him real or imagined, but Hillary who has been so abused by every "bully picking on a woman" gets off unless she commits a major blunder. Which is a similarilarity between Hillary and McCain, the media advances all their talking points but when they make a mistake the media may or may not report on it.

[gayleg]

The Times article is important because both Patrick and Obama advertise themselves as kindred political spirts who "riff" off each other. Axerod is behind both campaigns and they both share the Hope and Change message.

Deval has proven himself to be the empty suit his opposition said we was years ago. He can't get anything done. Once things got tough, he ran away from his duties.

Will Obama do the same? Well, when things got tough he did run off to the Virgin islands, didn't he?

Now I'll watch my comment get "disappeared" like 50 percent of all anti Obama comments here.

[apcpenguin]

Tim Kaine is the Governor of Virginia, not Vermont.

[SCG]

Ahhh that NYT jaded pen again. How they get away as being considered "liberal" is a joke, that the conservatives keep on life support.