This they’re-all-to-blame approach is popular in mainstream political analysis, though a close reading of the Post piece might cause a reader to tilt toward Obama’s side. Another good example of this powerful media frame was the New York Times‘ epic account of the debt ceiling debacle, which could not resist the gravitational tug of moral equivalency, concluding, “Obama and [House Speaker John] Boehner have clung to their separate realities not just because it’s useful to blame each other for the political dysfunction in Washington, but because neither wants to talk about just how far he was willing to go.”
Obama and his crew need to break through the compelling it’s-everyone’s-fault narrative. If he is lumped in with the opposition when it comes to culpability, he loses, for he is the politician who pledged to do better. The Republicans need only to battle to a messy who-knows tie to bolster the argument that Obama fell short in this key mission. If voters can’t sort out who’s really accountable for Washington’s ugliness, Obama will bear (or at least share) the burden of this failure. (And Mitt Romney will not.)
More.
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