Newt Gingrich bashes Politico's John Harris, media in debate ploy

This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details.

The role of stalwart chief executive already had two suitors in Rick Perry and Mitt Romney. Casting the rest of Wednesday night's Republican presidential debate, Ron Paul nailed the libertarian puritan and John Huntsman cornered reasonable moderate. So what job remained for onetime House Speaker Newt Gingrich, struggling to make a mark on a stage stacked with eight candidates?

How about Chief Media Basher and All-Around GOP Team Guy?

It may have amounted to a bit part, but one offering scene-stealing opportunity, especially given that the event at the Ronald Reagan Library & Museum in Simi Valley was being broadcast by MSNBC. The liberal-tilting cable network gave the also-ran Gingrich the perfect foil, the chance to play Republican Party uniter and -- who knows? -- maybe begin positioning himself for some future Cabinet appointment.

Gingrich's turn will be most remembered (and already celebrated by multiple conservative commentators) for attacking Politico's John Harris, when the debate moderator tried to get him to take sides between fellow GOP candidates on the issue of healthcare.

The Georgian got in a few other not-so-subtle digs at the media and advanced a much broader thesis: Attempts to tease out differences between the Republican hopefuls were thinly veiled maneuvers "to protect Barack Obama, who deserves to be defeated."

That proposition is enjoyable raw meat for the GOP base. And it would make a lot of sense, except for the fact that the entire cumbersome, protracted and heavily covered primary-election process is designed to expose and explain differences among a political party's various candidates. Is there any other way to help voters decide which product to finally pull off the shelf? (Well, probably, but this is the system we are stuck with, for now.)

Yet Gingrich and a sizable pack of post-debate commentators expressed dismay, even outrage, that NBC anchor Brian Williams and Harris would try to get the candidates to talk about their differences. Obviously, given MSNBC's well-deserved reputation for liberal political commentary, this had to be a partisan plot.

This raises many questions: Did all these people sleep through the last several presidential campaigns? Don't any of them recall how the media, to take just the most recent instance, spent months reporting and glorying in every possible distinction between dueling Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton? Have political debates, three years later, been redesignated as "friending" circles?

You would think so to listen to the undeniably bright (and, in this case, cunning) Gingrich. From his first answer, he made clear he would be school-marming and parrying the debate moderators, while playing shamelessly to the partisan gallery.

Asked about writing the forward for Perry's book "Fed Up" -- which outlines the Texas governor's serious doubts about all sorts of federal programs, including Medicare -- Gingrich would have none of it.

"Look, he's said himself that was an interesting book of ideas by somebody who's not proposing a manifesto for president," Gingrich said. "And I think to go back and try to take that apart is silly."

Even though the book was published just last year, Gingrich suggested to Williams that questions about "Fed Up" made no sense. So Check One, on Gingrich's new debating rules: Would-be presidents should not have to talk about their previous scribblings, even ones they wrote as visions of the Oval Office danced in their heads.

Near the end of the debate, the former Speaker would have to straighten Williams out again. In response to a question about Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke (whom he would fire "tomorrow"), Gingrich pivoted to an earlier question. A much earlier question; actually from a previous GOP debate.

"We were asked the wrong question at the last debate," Gingrich said. "The question isn't, would we favor a tax increase? The question is, how would we generate revenue?"

Gingrich said the conversation should be about cutting government and opening vast tracts of Alaska to gas and oil extraction. Never mind that many economists and public-opinion surveys would seem to put some tax increases (for higher-income earners) on the table for most Americans. We nonetheless have Gingrich's Check Two: No more questions about higher taxes. For anyone.

He saved his third rule, and sharpest barb, for Harris, the longtime political writer and co-founder of Politico.com.

Harris suggested that the two GOP front-runners -- Romney and Perry -- had "a genuine philosophical disagreement" over healthcare. As governor of Massachusetts, Romney passed a reform that required residents to buy health insurance. Perry and other Republicans have designated such a "mandate," a key to President Obama's national healthcare law, as just the sort of big-government solution that is anathema to economic recovery and American values.

Harris asked Gingrich to weigh in on the side of Romney's Massachusetts plan or the small-government approach in Texas, where one-quarter of residents are uninsured.

"Well, I'm frankly not interested in your effort to get Republicans fighting each other," Gingrich snapped. Harris interjected that there is a real choice to be made -- requiring citizens to buy health insurance, or not.

Gingrich remained unmoved. He huffed that he would "repudiate every effort of the news media to get Republicans to fight each other to protect Barack Obama, who deserves to be defeated." Check Three: the media should never expect one Republican to speak ill of another.

It seems abundantly clear, as Gingrich pointed out, that Republicans are unified in opposing Obama's healthcare changes. But not so clear, or true, is Gingrich's contention that only slippery, scheming journalists want to talk about Romney's healthcare record. The record of the last few months will show any number of occasions in which Republicans on the stump, with little aid from villainous reporters, used "Romneycare" to bludgeon the former Massachusetts governor.

Could the news media in clear conscience cover the current campaign and not raise one of the front-running candidate's major policy initiatives, one that was also a substantial public policy watershed? Wouldn't a moderator who failed to question what other candidates felt about that initiative be guilty of sloppiness, if not malpractice?

That Gingrich has begun flailing to draw himself attention is not just a conclusion of crazy liberals. Speaking on Fox Business Network on Thursday morning, anchor Chris Wallace said of Gingrich: "He is doing this stunt, which he did with me and he did with John Harris yesterday, which is attack the messenger. If he thinks that works, fine. I find it kind of sad."

[For the Record: 2:08 p.m. Sept. 9: A previous version of this post said anchor Chris Wallace spoke on Fox Business News.]

ALSO:

Jon Stewart blasts Mitt Romney's jobs plan

Perry, Romney square off in Reagan Library debate

On the Media: A grim reminder of Iraq tragedy from WikiLeaks

-- James Rainey
Twitter.com/latimesrainey

Photo: Texas Gov. Rick Perry, right, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich greet after a debate among GOP presidential candidates at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Musuem in Simi Valley on Wednesday. Credit: Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images

No joke: Jon Stewart voted Republican, at least once

Jon Stewart may have surprised some people when he told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” that he voted for Republican George H.W. Bush for president in 1988. “There was an integrity about him that I respected greatly,” Stewart told the Fox host.

Not so greatly that he made Bush 41 immune to his “Daily Show” barbs. As Stewart said repeatedly to the seemingly incredulous Fox host, “I am a comedian first."

Stewart’s Comedy Central program came on about seven years after the elder Bush left office, so he did not give the 41st president a full satiric working over. But over the years, he lobbed a few gentle darts at the retired chief executive.

When Bush went skydiving in 2004 to celebrate his 80th birthday, Stewart showed the clip. “OK,” he said, “we’re sorry we called you a wimp. Let it go!”

More than once, Stewart lumped the elder Bush in with the last half-dozen presidents in segments that castigated the entire group for failing to make the U.S. energy independent.

Around the time of Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009, Stewart showed the incoming president meeting with predecessors Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. Stewart said it looked like a “World’s Greatest Grandpa” competition, declaring Bush 41 the winner because “his pockets are filled with hard rock candy and penny whistles.”

Fox's Wallace invited Stewart on the program Sunday to challenge the comedian's suggestion that the Fox News channel functions as a conservative political organ more than a news outlet. Stewart neatly rebuffed Wallace’s arguments, saying ideology was only a secondary motivation for him.

"My comedy is informed by ideology, there is no question," he said. "But I am not an ideologue."
As I was looking for Stewart’s previous “Daily Show” mentions of Bush the elder, I ran into plenty of clips that would tend to back his comedy-first claim.

To cite just one: a June 25, 2009, segment in which the comedian contrasted Obama’s lofty election talk about transparency with his administration’s record of withholding information and documents, including background about a government eavesdropping program.

Stewart had one other quip for Wallace about why he voted for Bush. The then-vice president's opponent was then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. Referencing an infamous Dukakis photo faux pas, Stewart said: “There’s something about tiny people in helmets.”

-- James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Jon Stewart of the Daily Show debated Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday." He said comedy drove his show, not ideology. Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3 / "The Daily Show"

Bin Laden photos should be released to American people

Photos of Osama bin Laden won’t be released to the public and press, President Obama has decided—but it’s hard to imagine that the images won’t some day make their way into the public realm.

I think Obama erred on this difficult call. It seems only right that American citizens get additional evidence of an action taken in their name.

Obama reportedly told CBS’ “60 Minutes” that he did not want photos of the dead terrorist leader to become a rallying point for his Al Qaeda followers.

“There is no doubt that we killed Osama bin Laden,” Obama said in the interview, portions of which will air Wednesday night.  “We don’t need to spike the football.”

According to White House press secretary Jay Carney, Obama also told CBS that gloating by releasing the photos “is not who we are."

Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers had expressed opposition to the release of the photos. Fox News quoted sources as saying the pictures are extremely graphic—showing Bin Laden with an open gunshot wound to the forehead, his brain exposed and one eye “completely gone.”

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the intelligence committee, told Fox that he would oppose release of the photos if he thought they would make America's war in Afghanistan more difficult for U.S. troops.

It’s hard to imagine that public demand to see the photos—both by friends and enemies of America—will abate. And the American clamor to see the pictures seems like a righteous one.

The Navy SEALs team that killed Bin Laden late Sunday, U.S. time, took its action on order of the president  but to mete out justice on behalf of the American people. Recognizing this reality, the administration has already shown some members of Congress the Bin Laden pictures.

U.S. citizens should be able to examine at least some minimal evidence of the results of the daring raid.

We shouldn’t abandon our imperative to document and understand our government’s actions in wartime, simply because the most fanatic segments of a potential worldwide audience will not be pleased.

And extremists looking for a reason to inflame passions against America will find it, with or without the Bin Laden pictures.

I find myself in the unlikely company of Alan Dershowitz and Sarah Palin on this one. A public dissemination of the photos would not satisfy the fringe elements, but it will help the press and regular Americans understand the momentous event that has just occurred.

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Photos of the living Osama bin Laden are ubiquitous and fakes of Bin Laden in death have begun to crop up on the Internet. But President Obama has decided that the U.S. military's pictures of the dead Bin Laden, killed by an elite Navy SEALs commando team, will not be made public. Credit: AFP / Getty Images

 

Bin Laden death brings lots of praise on Fox News, not so much for Obama

A couple of hours into television coverage of the death of Osama bin Laden, commentators rightly congratulated a host of winners: the U.S. military, intelligence officials, the victims of the 9/11 attacks and their families.

But on Fox News, at least, credit was faint, at best, for one other individual: President Obama.

The conservative cable outlet quoted a string of former Republican officials who seemed unaware, or unwilling to acknowledge, that the commander in chief had ordered the mission that took out the world's most wanted man, with no American casualties.

Stephen Hadley, President George W. Bush's assistant for national security, told Fox the successful mission by U.S. forces was a "great moment" for the military, intelligence officials and Muslims who had been victimized by Bin Laden.

Former Bush Chief of Staff Andrew Card recounted how Bush had promised the mother of one of the firefighters killed at the World Trade Center in New York that he would never forget her son. Card said it was Bush's resolve that "led to the resolve that President Obama showed."

Regular Fox commentator Charles Krauthammer called the successful attack on the Al Qaeda terrorist leader a "great day for the United States." He said the mission showed America's resolve. Krauthammer didn't say anything about Obama's resolve, though the Democratic president had said getting Bin Laden was his top national security priority.

I switched to several stations through the night, so I might have missed a tip of the Fox cap to Obama. The first words of clear praise I heard came just before 2 a.m. EDT, when Greta Van Susteren said Obama would have been blamed if things went wrong. She added that, because of the mission's success: "He gets lots of credit, so does our military." 

Out on Twitter, political consultant Mike Murphy acknowledged the boost that the winning end to the 10-year manhunt would give the president. "Huge American victory," Murphy wrote. "Politics are great for Obama, not so great for continuing the current mission in Afghanistan."

Indeed, the complications and continuing threats from Muslim extremists can't be underestimated. That's as much the news in the decade-long war on terror as the death of a terrorist mastermind, in an operation ordered by President Obama.

-- James Rainey

Photo: Andrew Card.  Credit: Alex Wong / "Meet the Press" / Associated Press 

Calling Big Bird: Public TV and Radio fight for taxpayer support

It’s hard these days to persuade Republican deficit hawks in Congress to preserve taxpayer funding for just about any discretionary program. But try saving public money for your organization when one of your key executives has just popped off against those same congressional Republicans.

That’s the nasty bind public TV and radio leaders find themselves in these days—fighting on Capitol Hill  for their $430 million in annual funding just as National Public Radio’s top fundraiser, Ron Schiller, was caught in a video sting trashing…conservative Republicans. Schiller also said in the video (filmed surreptiously by faux potential donors) that NPR would be “better off in the long run” without federal support.

Schiller soon resigned, followed shortly by NPR’s chief executive, Vivian Schiller. (The two are not related.) Insiders hoped the resignations would tamp down calls for defunding, but congressional Republicans said they would not back down until all taxpayer support has been stripped away.

Many public radio employees expressed alarm at the prospective loss of funding. But a chief lobbyist for public television stations sounded a much more confident note—saying there is a quiet but significant group of Republicans who would come to the support of public broadcasting.

Jennifer Ferro, general manager of Santa Monica-based KCRW 89.9 FM, was on The Hill pushing for continued public funding Wednesday. While members of the California Democratic delegation remain supportive, she said, Republicans “don’t even want to talk about the issue and what we do. They are competing with each other to cut more and more.”

Ferro argues that the $1 million to $1.2 million KCRW receives each year is a modest investment that helps the station leverage a total budget of more than $13 million, most of it from listeners, corporate sponsors and foundations. “It’s seed money that we make go a long way,” she said.

If the station loses that government support and can’t raise the money elsewhere, it would likely have to cut its most costly operations—local news and information gathering, Ferro said. A couple of producers hired in November to create more local news stories would have to go, she said, as might some staffers who help create talk shows like “To the Point” and “Which Way, L.A.?” both popular mainstays, hosted by veteran newsman Warren Olney.

Ferro would like to see other public radio stations pushing harder to defend their work, which even many conservatives have conceded is more even-handed than critics contend. I wrote recently how San Gabriel Valley Rep. David Dreier shared his love of NPR and and said he considered public radio mostly fair-minded. Dreier, however, is for eventually pushing NPR off the public dole.

While Ferro expressed alarm, the man who represents public television affiliates before Congress told “The Hill” newspaper this week that he is confident.  “I do think if there ever comes an up-or-down vote on public broadcasting itself, we'll wind up with a bipartisan majority in favor of continuing our funding," said Patrick Butler, chief executive of the Association of Public Television Stations.

While Butler’s organization insists supportive Republicans are out there, they sure aren't making a lot of noise about it. In most of heir recent mid-term election triumphs, conservatives promised to slash federal spending of all kinds.  House Republicans unanimously approved a measure that would “zero out” broadcasting dollars, though most Democrats and President Obama have left the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which supports both TV and radio) in their budget plans.

Perhaps it’s time for public broadcasting advocates—and I’m one of them—to consider alternatives. While the corporate bosses have taken on considerable baggage after the Schiller video (and the earlier controversial ousting of commentator Juan Williams from NPR) local public stations maintain tremendous followings.

If it comes to a final vote on funding, supporters should at least move to bifurcate the question and have lawmakers vote separately on public support of the troubled mother ship and on public support for local affiliates. I suspect it would be much harder for even budget hard-liners to vote against their local public radio and TV stations.

Members of Congress shoule recall a lesson from their own political careers: Polls constantly show the public loathes Congress in general, but the same voters keep sending their local lawmakers back to Washington, time after time.

Most voters might not love sending their tax dollars to the East Coast powers that run public broadcasting, but they’d hate to lose the local outlet that’s often their best hope of receiving quality news.

RELATED:

Vivian Schiller, NPR chief, resigns amid 'tea party' video fallout

NPR 'appalled' by its executive's 'tea party' remarks in video

 

--James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: National Public Radio CEO and president Vivian Schiller resigned March 9 after a furor set off by a sting against another NPR executive, who was shown on video disparaging conservatives. Schiller had previously worked at CNN and the New York Times. Credit: NPR

Fox News shocker: Fox analysts agree that Bill O'Reilly's Obama interview was terrific

Covering Hollywood, I've learned that one of the worst things about the business is how everyone kowtows to the boss. When a big-shot filmmaker shows his pals and associates a first cut of his new film, everyone is full of praise, no matter how awful the movie actually is. The same goes inside the studio executive suite, where once a studio chief has offered unbridled excitement about a spec script, the underlings are quick to echo that enthusiasm, no matter what they might privately think.

I was thinking about all that showbiz Group Think when I was watching "The O'Reilly Factor" Monday night, knowing that the real fun wasn't so much in watching Bill O'Reilly interview President Obama on Super Sunday, but in watching Papa Bear crow about his scoop the following evening. Sure enough, O'Reilly was busting his buttons with pride, replaying a bunch of the highlights, along with some unseen interview footage, but not before boasting that his session with Obama was, as he modestly put it, "the most widely viewed interview of all time."

But what really mattered wasn't just how much O'Reilly liked the interview, but how much his cohorts at Fox News liked it as well. So O'Reilly brought in a host of Fox News staffers, all of whom--gasp!--told him what a great job he did interviewing the president. Fox contributor Juan Williams could barely contain himself, gushing "Let me say congratulations! You're the talk of the nation today." Fox analyst Mary Katharine Ham told O'Reilly his interview with Obama was marvelous, just "as it always is when you two guys talk." Even Brit Hume showed up to pat O'Reilly on the back, saying in his cozy, barroom baritone: "I thought you did fine." Bernie Goldberg, who is sort of Fox's in-house mainstream media critic, also stopped by to offer praise, at least when he wasn't taking shots at rival news interviewers who'd supposedly been condescending toward Sarah Palin.

The whole show had the same air of blissful unreality that was no doubt on display the first time James Brooks showed his friends an early cut of "How Do You Know." Not that O'Reilly did a bad job at all. He's a good interviewer, once you get used to the fact that he's not content to just ask questions about Afghanistan or the debt crisis, but needs to let us know what he thinks about the issue too. I know a lot of my liberal pals thought O'Reilly interrupted the president way too often--20 times by AOL's count, 28 times according to MSNBC.

But as O'Reilly himself noted on Monday, when he heard that he's interrupted Obama 20 times in 15 minutes, he immediately thought--"That's all? I thought it was more!" That's good reporting. When you do a live interview, you have to be willing to prevent your subject from running out the clock. And that's hardly a conservative media trait. If MSNBC wants to count interruptions, it should start with its own Chris Matthews, who's so eager to hear his own voice that if he were interviewing a Shakespearian actor trying to recite "Hamlet," the poor guy would never get past "To be or not to be," because Matthews would be stepping on his lines, barking, "Well, which one is it?"

--Patrick Goldstein    

  Photo: Fox News' top rated host, Bill O'Reilly, at his New York studio.

Credit: Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times

Frank Luntz explains his Obama-loathing focus group [Updated]

The Big Picture earlier told you about the focus group Fox News has been relying on to assess President Obama's performance in Tuesday's State of the Union Address--a speech the panel mostly rated as abysmal.

That seemed surprising, given that Obama's approval rating has been rising in recent weeks and that he made no stunning new proposals in the speech, while pledging to work to find common ground with Republicans.

Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who led the panel of 29 people in Atlanta, responded via e-mail that the focus group's negative reaction was not as surprising as I might think it was. He said that people who use computer "dials" to instantly record their impressions of a speech or debate are responding to something specific and express different views than the public at large.

"I have found that when people dial a speech, they pay closer attention to everything said," Luntz wrote. "When I did this for Fox in 2008, Obama WON all three debates for the same reason. A casual observer will have a different reaction (like being impacted by applause and standing ovations) than someone listening closely."

"And that accounts for why Obama can have a 50% job approval, a 60% favorability, and an 80% likeability rating all at the same time," Luntz continued. "The questions measure different aspects of a person's image. People who are dialing the speech focus much more on the substance than the style."

[Updated at 9:40 a.m., Jan. 27 Luntz offered a final word on his focus group via e-mail Wednesday night: "And as the guy whose focus groups gave obama wins in three out of three debates live on fox news, you can't say I have an anti-obama track record."] 

Still, I wondered about the composition of the panel, since Luntz said almost nothing about that when he appeared on Sean Hannity's show Tuesday, except that 13 of the 29 voted for Obama in 2008. In our extended e-mail exchange, Luntz responded: "I didn't ask party affiliation or ideology."

That seemed odd, since I had seen a Luntz Twitter message from earlier in January in which he directed prospective focus group members (who would be paid $100 each) to a questionnaire. That survey explicitly asked two dozen questions related to the subjects' demographic, ideological and political views, including opinions on Obama.

When I asked Luntz about the questionnaire, he acknowledged: "Yes, I asked those questions when people initially applied to participate, along with education, income, occupation, ethnicity and lots of other questions.  I ask a lot.  I do everything I can to have these groups reflect the voting pool from wherever I am.  But I didn't ask party ID or ideology again that night."

Maybe something was lost in translation again because, a bit later, I got another e-mail in which the pollster informed me that he did know the party affiliation of those on his Tuesday panel, after all. There were 8 Democrats, 10 Republicans and 11 independents, he said.

Luntz had earlier told me that "four invited Obama participants still didn't show," which I took as an acknowledgment the panel was not as balanced as it might have been.

In any event, it would have been nice if Luntz had taken some time on the air to explain who was on this panel and what it was supposed to represent. Given that the group's views went out to a national television audience, a viewer would suspect it reflected a cross-section of the entire electorate. Or was it likely voters? Something else? The partisan mix suggested something closer, I'm guessing, to party makeup in the Republican-leaning state of Georgia.

Luntz's initial survey of prospective panelists also asked them overall to rate Obama and give him a letter grade. Again, it would have been nice to know how those we saw on national TV had responded to those questions. But TV apparently doesn't have time for such details.

As the Big Pic previously noted, Luntz asked the focus group how they felt about President Obama saying the recession was over. That seemed particularly leading and unfair, because Obama never declared an end to the recession. Instead, he said, in the State of the Union, that the "worst" of the recession had ended. He stressed that more jobs are badly needed.

Luntz said he asked the question that way because the panel "dialed downward" at the moment Obama spoke about the worst being over. "It's what they heard," Luntz said. "I realize Obama said the worst of the recession is over, but they heard the recession is over." The pollster said he would show the panel's reaction on the air in a future Fox program.

After about half a dozen e-mails, Luntz seemed to have had his fill of my second-guessing. He told me he was struggling to get home in a snow storm.

"Geez, give me a break," he protested. "You try running one of these sessions live with all the technical, audio and video challenges.  How about giving me credit for telling viewers who these people voted for in 2008, or keeping them respectful to each other when they're ready to attack. This stuff is tough."

--James Rainey
Twitter: latimesrainey

Image: Republican pollster Frank Luntz used his Twitter account earlier this month to find participants for a focus group on the State of the Union speech. Most members of the Luntz panel, aired on Fox News' Sean Hannity program, slammed President Obama.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frank Luntz, Fox News and faux science take on Obama

Opinions of President Obama's State of the Union address will naturally vary. But we now should be able to reach a national consensus on one putrid post-address tradition: instant polling and focus groups.

At the end of the 62-minute address Tuesday night, Fox News aired what can only be called public opinion "show-data" -- faux science not worth the micro video-bytes it was embedded on. CNN committed a lesser, but still unnecessary offense: introducing a "flash" poll overweighted with Democrats.

Anyone who has been paying attention knows that more rigorous national surveys have found something much more equivocal: After a long swoon, the president's approval rating has begun to recover in recent weeks. A composite of surveys at Pollster.com shows 49.8% of Americans approving of Obama's performance and 45.1% disapproving.

You wouldn't have gotten a hint that the nation is that closely divided from cable TV's noise makers.

Over at CNN, senior correspondent Joe Johns appeared not long after the House chamber emptied to tell us that, per expectations, television viewers of presidential addresses tend to be from the president's own party. Of the 475 questioned by CNN in its instant survey, "the vast majority" were Democrats.

Among that self-selecting group, Johns told us, 52% had a "very positive" impression of Obama's speech and 32% a "somewhat positive" impression. Just 15% reacted negatively. Further, 61% of those it surveyed "thought positively about the President's policies" before the speech, a figure that jumped up to 77% after watching the address.

It seemed barely illuminating that a group heavily tilted toward Obama stalwarts liked him even more after they heard him speak for an hour. At least CNN gave us enough information to know their poll came from anything other than a representative sample of Americans.

The group presented by Frank Luntz, not surprisingly, had even bigger problems. I say not surprisingly because the pollster has long been closely tied to the Republican Party and rigorous partisanship. Luntz is a master of wordplay who, among other things, helped Republicans devise their attacks on the healthcare reform legislation. Don't talk about a public option, he said. Call it a "government takeover."

As the nonpartisan Politifact.com reported, Luntz wrote in a 28-page memo to reform foes: "Takeovers are like coups. They both lead to dictators and a loss of freedom."

That gives you an idea where the Fox favorite comes from. Given his inherent credibility gap, Luntz might have begun his segment with Sean Hannity on Tuesday night by explaining a little bit about the 29 people he assembled in Atlanta. 

Where did they come from? What was their party affiliation? How did they feel about Obama before the State of the Union? He did none of that.

Instead, the segment began with Hannity launching into his complaints about Obama, calling his speech  "flat," uninspiring and disingenuous -- because Obama talked about cutting spending after the federal government ran up a huge debt fighting the recession.

Being a man of precision and science, Luntz moved to make sure that statement didn't taint his impartial panel. "I don't want you to feel under pressure because of what Sean Hannity just said," he told the group.

Thus put at ease, the panel was asked for one word to sum up Obama's performance. In a nation we know to be about evenly divided in its feelings about the president, these are the first seven answers Luntz got: "optimism, platitudes," followed by "empty ... redundant ... political ... not connected with America ... hyperbole ... Obama conflicting..."

Hmm. Must be a real pocket of Obama opposition in heavily Democratic Atlanta. And that pocket just happened to find its way into the front row seats on the set where Luntz staged this little tea party.

It went on in that vein: The bulk of panelists suggesting the lack of bipartisanship was clearly, unquestionably the fault of Obama, not the Republicans. One man even rated the president's promises as about as  trustworthy as "romantic talk from Tiger Woods." (It had to be a coincidence that this fellow's two paragons of mendacity were two prominent African Americans.)

In case the anti-Obama feeding frenzy might stall, Luntz chummed the waters a little. He did it by misconstruing what the president said about the economy. While Obama stated that the "worst" of the recession had passed, Luntz asked the panel to respond to Obama's notion that "the recession is over."

Lo and behold, the vast majority of the panelists disagreed with something the president never said.

Toward the end of the segment, Luntz let viewers know that 13 of the 29 people he brought together had voted for Obama in 2008. As I recall, Obama won the last presidential election. But why start with a more closely balanced panel when you can present one that's so much more, more ... outspoken?

(Luntz told me via e-mail that the other 16 on his panel had voted for John McCain. Apparently explaining the imbalance, he added that "four invited Obama participants still didn't show." He did not immediately answer about the panelists' party affiliation or pre-speech sentiments about Obama.)

It was a bit anticlimactic when only seven of the onetime Obama supporters raised their hands when Luntz asked who was still "pretty well" behind the president.

Luntz had done his work by doing Hannity's work -- offering his faux science as proof that Obama is in  political straits. "If I were Barack Obama watching this tonight," Luntz said, "I would be a little bit nervous."

The sequels could be coming up for days on Fox. It began Wednesday morning on "Fox & Friends," where Luntz used the same panel and similar tactics to prove that Obama wasn't even the real focus for most Americans on Tuesday night.

Instead, Luntz assured us that the man who really made the winning impression was Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who gave the official Republican response. "Barack Obama was the focus," Luntz said, "but Paul Ryan seems to be the star."

-- James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Fox News host Sean Hannity hosted Republican pollster Frank Luntz on Tuesday night. Luntz used a focus group to suggest that President Obama is in political straits. Mainstream polling suggests a more divided view of the president. Credit: KABC-AM radio

 

 

Keith Olbermann on Michele Bachmann: Was she speaking to an invisible camerman named Murray?

OK, I confess. I thought I was made of sterner stuff, but I'm starting to officially miss "Countdown With Keith Olbermann." Rachel Maddow is just fine. Lawrence O'Donnell has potential. And Chris Matthews, well, has he ever gone 20 seconds without interrupting a guest?

Since Olbermann signed off Friday night, I've been having withdrawal pangs, missing his hilarious "Oddball" segments, longing for his eloquent rants, pining for his wryly comic Friday readings of James Thurber. Even if I didn't always agree with his politics, I thought Olbermann was an amazingly compelling on-air presence. Often unpredictable, almost always crackling with a kind of neurotic electricity, he was the closest thing on TV to a real-life Aaron Sorkin character, with a love of language, a barbed sense of humor and a passionate, occasionally self-destructive commitment to causes and personal ideals that sometimes only he seemed to understand.

Even though he's gone from MSNBC, thanks to Twitter we can still get a condensed version of what's on Olbermann's mind. He was in rare form during Rep. Michele Bachmann's "tea party" truly "oddball" response to the president's State of the Union address Tuesday night, offering zinger after zinger about the fact that Bachmann inexplicably seemed to be staring off camera during her entire speech. In other words, even though Olbermann wasn't on TV, he was focused on the TV-ness of it all, as if he were dreaming up a "Larry Sanders Show" sketch as he was watching.

Here's a few of his best bits:

"MICHELE! Hey! Yoo-hoo! CONGRESSWOMAN! We're the ones in the MIDDLE."

"Did the Tea Party not spring either for a Camera Red Light or a combined camera-teleprompter? It costs $3 extry."

"Seriously, somebody at the Tea Party needs to run on the stage, grab her, and POINT TO WHERE THE CAMERA IS."

"I haven't seen anything like that since Alan Keyes' old TV show where he would look left and right, even though there was no audience."

"Tonight's Final Score: Obama 22 Ryan 1 Bachmann -11,746."

Think Olbermann should have scored the speech differently? See it for yourself below.

-- Patrick Goldstein

 

 

Photo: Keith Olbermann speaking to the Television Critics Association press tour at the Beverly Hilton in 2008.

Credit: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

 

Roger Ailes to Fox on Giffords coverage: 'Tone it down'

If you had to guess which media outlet Fox News boss Roger Ailes would choose to air his views on the media furor surrounding the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, pick No. 1 would probably not be the website run by a hip-hop mogul.

Yet there Ailes was Monday in a brief online Q&A with Russell Simmons, posted on Globalgrind.com, the website of clothing creator, Def Jam founder and entrepreneur Simmons.

Less surprising was that Ailes used the platform to scoff at the notion that angry political commentary (including on his cable station) had anything to do with the shooting of Giffords and 19 others.

Ailes did concede that a bit of dialing back of the rhetoric might be in order. "I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually," Ailes said. "You don’t have to do it with bombast. I hope the other side does that."

Fox's commentators — particularly the overwrought Glenn Beck with his bluster and constant fulminations about America's imminent collapse — haven't been big on toning down. But there was Beck's boss, for what it was worth, calling for, uh, modulation.

That's not to say, as I note in my "On the Media" column, that any commentator should be blamed, based on what we know now, for inciting the violence in Tucson. Jared Lee Loughner appears to be a disturbed young man whose political views were muddled. No specific evidence has emerged linking his oddball views to the shooting.

So why would Ailes choose to talk to Simmons about the media storm surrounding the shooting?

That's hard to know, since Simmons didn't offer any context or explanation for the interview. Simmons has been a stalwart backer of President (and previously candidate) Obama and has talked about building his Globalgrind into a powerhouse for news and for political organizing.

But I'm probably not alone among media writers in having never visited the site before the brief Ailes interview.

Besides insisting he really did want some measure of restraint from his staff, Ailes used the Simmons interview to rail about the incredibility (he used a saltier term) of claims that the conservative media drove Loughner.

In an interesting (and unintentional?) twist, Ailes said that "nobody screened [Loughner] for getting a weapon." Surely the boss of 2nd Amendment-friendly Fox wasn't suggesting a need for stiffer gun laws in notoriously laissez-faire Arizona?

He also said it was @*)@*#@ (that salty word again) for critics to suggest that Fox entertainer Sarah Palin had culpability in the shooting. During the recent midterm election Palin put out a map targeting 20 House members, including Giffords, for defeat. A gunsight-style target appeared on a map of America over each targeted district.

Ailes said he had personally had his picture tagged with a bull's eye over his head. "This goes on," he said, "both sides are wrong, but they both do it."

Simmons didn't give any push back on the notion that nasty rhetoric comes equally from both sides of the ideological divide. "Angry left, angry right," Simmons said, "none of it's good."

Simmons then seemed to make an attempt to jump-start the kind of caring dialogue he said would break down barriers. He told the Fox boss that Obama isn't really as left wing as some suggest.

The music impressario suggested he fit to the left of Obama. To that, Ailes laughed and responded:  "Then you must be skinny, you can’t get between him and the wall. You gotta to be one skinny guy, man."

So much for a meeting of the minds.

— James Rainey

Twitter: latimesrainey

Photo: Entrepreneur Russell Simmons. Credit: Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images for Extra.