Cagle Post: Obama’s Records and The Mainstream Media

The argument that President Obama is being treated unfairly or differently than previous presidents when it comes to the voluntary disclosure of non-public records is absurd. This false narrative is simply an attempt to distract from the indisputable fact that the President and his team handled this entire sorry episode like a pack of amateurs, with the media in cahoots. Waiting until 2011 to resolve an issue that could have been resolved in 2008 is humorously inept. If there was never anything to hide, which there apparently was not, why wait until you’re on the brink of a meltdown at the polls? Let’s be honest, the only people who deserve blame for the birth certificate debacle are President Obama, his incompetent advisers, and large swaths of the mainstream media.

Bill and Hillary Clinton must be through the roof over the storyline coming from the White House and the Left that President Obama is being treated unfairly for having to finally disclose his official birth certificate. For a decade, the Clintons were compelled by pressure from the mainstream media to disclose nearly every document they ever generated. These very investigative media reports were the driving force behind the seven independent counsel investigations (Clinton, Espy, Cisneros, Herman, Brown, Babbitt, Segal) that were appointed during the Clinton Administration. Where are these investigative reports and skeptical journalists today? Either they are in hiding or simply don’t exist anymore. This is precisely the reason why the bloggers and, yes, Donald Trump are leading the charge and asking the tough questions.

Why did the mainstream media not demand Obama’s birth certificate in 2008, just like they demanded records from Bill Clinton and George W. Bush in 1992 and 2000, respectively? There is a lesson to be learned here for members of the press corps who are sympathetic to Mr. Obama to a fault. Giving him a free pass on politically inconvenient issues does not help him in the long run politically. In fact, this issue has demonstrated it is quite the opposite.

Read the full op-ed here