Boy, that Washington Post. You can’t get anything past these guys. After nearly three years of jokes about President Obama’s reliance on a teleprompter, the WaPo decides to do a story on the issue.
Here’s how the story opens:
It’s one of the very symbols of the presidency — the ultimate accessory to the ultimate bully pulpit, seemingly trumpeting to all that the words being uttered actually matter.
So why, on the campaign trail, has the teleprompter instead become a symbol of ineptitude, mocked repeatedly by Republican candidates?
Why has it become an object of ridicule for Obama? Perhaps because he relies on it more than Linus relies on his security blanket. No matter what the event, or the shortness of the remarks, Obama relies on his electronic cheat sheets.
I remarked about this in a blog post in July of 2008, so this is not news, except to The Washington Post:
If you want to make eye contact with Barack Obama don’t stand in the center of the audience. Because he’s so dependent on the TelePrompters, he never, and I mean never, looks straight ahead.
After he took office, in March 2009, the presidential reliance on teleprompters became so noticeable that I created this Photoshop just to poke a little fun:
And you know the teleprompter meme is widespread when late-night comics make fun of his overuse of the contraption:
So, why is The Washington Post so late coming to his party? Why have they just noticed, at least editorially, this presidential crutch? The sole purpose of their “scoop,” it seems to me, is to point out that, well, some Republican use them too. So, there!
But Romney and the other candidates do still roll out the teleprompters for certain occasions, such as when the former Massachusetts governor recently delivered a major speech on foreign affairs at the Citadel. And sometimes candidates can be seen looking down at notes.
Funny how “looking down at notes” is used as a criticism of Republican candidates, or at least a sign of Republican hypocrisy, while Obama’s addiction to rolling text reflected on a piece of glass went unremarked for years by the newspaper.
Here’s one famous video of Obama stumbling without his security blanket at one campaign event in 2008:
That video alone should answer The Washington Post‘s question of why Obama’s over-reliance on a teleprompter has become a symbol of ineptitude.
UPDATE: This one is from just last night:
Jon Ham is vice president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of its newspaper, Carolina Journal.