'False Balance'

Why Obama is so out of touch.

By JAMES TARANTO

The writer of this Associated Press headline is either witty or clueless: "Obama Defends Tenor of His Campaign, Slams Romney." The mixed metaphor almost seems appropriate for such a mixed message. At a press conference yesterday, the president "took questions from four reporters, the most he has taken from the national press corps in two months," the AP reports. One of the reporters, CBS's Nancy Cordes, actually asked him about the vicious tone of his campaign.

Rex Features via Associated Press

I am not a jerk.

In response, Obama "defended the tone of his campaign . . . and insisted it's actually Mitt Romney's ads that are 'patently false.' " But his very denials of negative campaigning amounted to negative campaigning. As the AP puts it, he "did distance himself from a particularly provocative negative ad by a political group that supports him." Said the president: "I don't think that Governor Romney is somehow responsible for the death of the woman that was portrayed in that ad"--repeating the allegation in the course of weakly repudiating it.
Obama similarly employed apophasis when he asserted that "nobody accused Mr. Romney of being a felon." In fact, as the Washington Examiner notes, Obama aide Stephanie Cutter did just that, telling reporters last month "that Romney 'through his own words and his own signature' misrepresented 'his position at Bain to the [Securities and Exchange Commission], which is a felony.' "
RealClearPolitics.com notes that last week, in an interview with "Entertainment Tonight" (!), Obama made this risible assertion: "I don't think you or anybody who's been watching the campaign would say that in any way we have tried to divide the country. We've always tried to bring the country together."
The reader who sent us this clip observes that Obama probably believes what he's saying and describes him as the "most isolated president since Nixon. That's always the problem. Who tells his boss he is acting like [a jerk]?"