Apparently this guy doesn't exist in the National Journal's world.
How about
some crazy from Ron Fournier's National Journal, courtesy of James Oliphant?
Progressive Bloggers Are Doing the White House's Job
This administration enjoys an advantage afforded no other: a partisan media that has its back, minute-by-minute.
Yup. No other administration has ever had any partisan media supporting it. It was horrible all those years when George W. Bush didn't have Fox News and Rush Limbaugh backing him up. How did he ever survive without pretty much the entire AM talk radio lineup, multiple conservative publications like the
National Review and
Weekly Standard, as well as Drudge Report, Free Republic and the rest of the wingnutosphere?
He had The New Republic's Brian Beutler dismissing Benghazi as "nonsense." He had Slate's David Weigel, along with The Washington Post's Plum Line blog, debunking any claim that the new email was a "smoking gun." Media Matters for America labeled Benghazi a "hoax." Salon wrote that the GOP had a "demented Benghazi disease." Daily Kos featured the headline: "Here's Why the GOP Is Fired Up About Benghazi—and Here's Why They're Wrong." The Huffington Post offered "Three Reasons Why Reviving Benghazi Is Stupid—for the GOP."
Dave Weigel, once at the Libertarian
Reason, is a progressive blogger? But hey, a bunch of publications point out that the Benghazi stuff is crazy conspiracy theory, because, you know, it is, and the only explanation is that they're liberal.
While the bond between presidential administrations and friendly opinion-shapers goes back as far as the nation itself, no White House has ever enjoyed the luxury that this one has, in which its arguments and talking points can be advanced on a day-by-day, minute-by-minute basis. No longer must it await the evening news or the morning op-ed page to witness the fruits of its messaging efforts.
Seriously, the author has never heard of Fox News, conservative talk radio and the conservative internet? You know, the same hacks pushing the Benghazi conspiracy, after they gave up pushing Cliven Bundy's conspiracy theories, after they gave up pushing Obamacare conspiracy theories, after they gave up pushing "Mitt Romney is going to win a landslide" fantasies.
Fortuitously for the president, the modern media landscape not only provides ample space for the expression of pure partisanship, it actively encourages it.
FOX F'N NEWS! RUSH F'N LIMBAUGH!!!
But hey, some people on the internet make a point-by-point refutation of the conservative Benghazi obsession, and that's enough to rewrite two decades' worth of media history.
Update: Dave Weigel's response:
The White House press corps gets less and less access, which is criminal, and there's plenty of bitterness to go around when it's discovered that a progressive-leaning reporter was invited to more off-the-record meetings than a studiously nonideological reporter. It's turf-protection. And the way it's written, with its lazy confirmation of conservative theories about the lefty media, it might even get a Drudge link!
And yes, that piece got the Drudge link.