The Sunday Paper Staff Blog

“Sorry about your guy,” my friend said as he walked me to my car after the third and final presidential debate between Democratic Sen. Barack Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain.

“Oh, it’s okay,” I said. “It could be worse—he could get elected.”

He laughed until he realized I was serious.

McCain lost the third and final debate fair and square. I felt strongly that he won the first one with a fine display of foreign policy knowledge. The second was a draw. But this one was most definitely Obama’s.

Obama won the debate, but he raised more troubling issues that other media seem unwilling to touch. How is it possible that he can cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans while providing health care for all of them while allowing those who want to stick with their company-purchased insurance to do so? He only says that introducing a government plan will drive down the cost of private insurance, but the thing that will decide that is what the government plan will actually cover. It would have to cover a lot to compete with most private packages, and it has to compete if it’s going to drive down cost. He says it will be basic. But, even if it covers only half as much, how will America, with its 320 million people, pay for it if taxes are cut?

“Are you worried about all the media you’ve criticized?” my friend asked, interrupting my thoughts.

“Nope, not at all, I stand behind every single word of every single story, blog or column, but I am worried about the media in one particularly troubling sense: who’s going to report on the malfunctions and misdeeds of the Obama Administration?”

For several months now I’ve watched aghast as media organizations I used to admire had one ethical lapse after another for the sake of promoting Obama. So, if they are all so in love with Obama that they are willing to sacrifice ethics and integrity for him, and they clearly are, then who will report honestly on Obama’s administration?

I’m not saying that I expect Obama himself to commit any scandalous infractions. I don’t think he will. I also don’t think Obama is a terrorist pal and I’ve never given this paper’s ink to that line of rubbish or to any insinuations about his non-existent relationship with Bill Ayers. But the media shamelessly and obviously dropped the ball this election year. They left it up to the candidates to set the agenda, when they should have been setting it. I say “they” because I did what I could—there was a lead as big as a broadsheet in Obama’s complicity in not passing a bill in 2005 to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, something that could have prevented the majority of our economic suffering today. He took money from Freddie and Fannie employees and related non-profits and looked the other way when the bill was killed. But those reporters who went after Obama busied themselves with the garbage leads about Ayers, seeking reactionary pay dirt rather than something that might be worthy of real concern. And there’s plenty to be concerned about besides his Fannie Mae connections or the weird math of less tax revenue and more spending. For one, his off-hand remark during the debate that clearly showed his soft-spot for labor leaders in Colombia also showed his insensitivity to the Colombian government, a government that carried out a daring rescue of 15 hostages of FARC last summer, and three of those hostages were Americans; a government that has supported us and been a stalwart thorn in the side of our South American arch-enemy Hugo Chavez, a thieving despot with whom Obama supporter Jesse Jackson exchanged hugs and reassurances of support in 2005.

Will you trust the media that has allowed these things to go unquestioned to cover Obama’s administration, an administration that will preside over a House and Senate controlled by Democrats? Where will you turn for truth and balance when all that will remain of a GOP counterweight in Washington is a few Supreme Court justices?