Obama’s Kill List: The Media is Stumped

Aside from the initial flurry of stories regarding Obama’s drone policy, particularly the part where the administration has decided it can target and kill American citizens without due process, the media is stumped. They don’t know what to do with the story now.

Normally – aka “if a Republican were president” – they would spend days and weeks trotting out legal experts, constitutional scholars, congressmen, and anyone else they could find to explain how the Republican president was acting like a dictator and how this was a gross violation of our rights as citizens, etc. It would be non-stop. Remember the waterboarding stuff? Like that.

But Obama is president now. The media has forgotten that their job is to hold the president accountable and, instead, have appointed themselves Obama’s protectors. Even if they disagree with him. So they don’t know where to go from here. They are probably expecting Republican politicians to come out against the policy. Actually, they’re praying for it.

You can almost see them waiting for the first sign of it so they can go through Lexis/Nexis to find examples of Republicans supporting drone strikes or other controversial policies. Then they’ll muddy the waters by comparing apples and oranges. For example, they might find someone supporting the idea of drone strikes who never said it was cool to target American citizens, but they’ll leave that out. They’ll focus on the drone strike part and go to great lengths to portray the criticism as hypocritical.

Watch. It’s going to happen.

Oddly, Republicans haven’t pounced on this yet. Maybe they’re finally getting the game, although I doubt it. They’re probably scared of what the media will do to them – what I described above. Instead of explaining the differences between what Bush did and what Obama is doing, the GOP will punt. And that’s unfortunate.

Anyway, keep an eye out. If there’s a Republican of adequate stature brave enough to hit Obama over this, the media will let loose and get back to what they’ve been doing since Obama was elected: circling the wagons around him to protect his legacy.

Put money on it.