Glenn Greenwald is on a roll:
Obviously, at least in theory, presidential campaigns are newsworthy. But consider the impact from the fact that they dominate media coverage for so long, drowning out most everything else. A presidential term is 48 months; that the political media is transfixed by campaign coverage for 18 months every cycle means that a President can wield power with substantially reduced media attention for more than 1/3 of his term.
Thus, he can wage a blatantly illegal war in Libya for months on end, work to keep U.S. troops in Iraq past his repeatedly touted deadline, scheme to cut Social Security and Medicare as wealth inequality explodes and thereby please the oligarchical base funding his campaign, use black sites in Somalia to interrogate Terrorist suspects, all while his Party's Chairwoman works literally to destroy Internet privacy — all with virtually no attention paid.
The rage on the left is real, isn't it? But when picked apart, the outrage against campaigns is surely excessive. Campaigns are probably the most effective criticism of those in power, because they target a leader at his or her most vulnerable and because everyone running against him or her has an incentive to expose and attack. The catastrophe of the Bush legacy was, for example, fully and expansively laid out in the campaign for 2008. The trouble for Glenn this time is that a Democrat is the incumbent and without a primary challenge, much of the conversation is coming from the right. The liberal critique of Obama is thereby muted.
But the media is following the democracy, not the other way round.
(Image of a special edition Shepard Fairey poster).
The Dish 