President Bush came under heavy criticism for his inaugural expenses in 2005, but such criticism was lacking for the Obama extravaganza.

From the L.A. Times

When George Bush’s people put on a $42-million inaugural program four years ago,  many editorial writers and columnists around America came unglued.

A St.  Petersburg (Fla.) Times commentator said the president needed to prove that his call for sacrifice “is more than just empty words.” A Washington Post columnist suggested Bush & Co. should be ashamed of staging lavish parties in the face of their debacle in Iraq. A columnist at the New York Observer evoked images of Louis XIV.

It would have been nice, for the sake of consistency and fairness, if the commentariat had leveled a measure of that same attitude at last week’s Obamapalooza, which cost roughly the same but drew a fraction of the blow-back.

Critics on the right have explained the discrepancy with their default argument about liberal media bias. But I think President Obama got a (mostly) free pass on his lavish coming-out party because of other bad media habits: like the tendency to follow the pack, to embrace critiques if they are buttressed by a politician’s allies and, especially, to get swept up in the mood of the moment.

Reporters—yes, even columnists—are human. They get carried away with the big story and have trouble changing direction—which last week centered on all the people who came a long way to be a part of history.

“The press is reflecting a euphoria about the Obama presidency that is real and a honeymoon that any new president gets,” said Tom Rosenstiel,  director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. “But it’s important for media not to get caught up in that euphoria.”

Democratic hypocrisy, the media in the tank for Obama, what else were we expecting anyway?

 

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