The Fairness Doctrine is coming back! Rush told me so!

Well, Rush is a not an idiot. He's dead wrong, but he's not an idiot, because he knows an issue that can turn the spotlight once more on El Rushbo when he sees it.

Rush Limbaugh first and foremost is all about Rush Limbaugh and justifying his hopelessly bloated new radio contract. And that is why he adamantly will not allow the facts to stand in the way of his assertion that Barack Obama is bringing back the Fairness Doctrine.

And it is his consistent carping about this issue, the return of "Hush Rush," that convinced the Kansas City Star to put the issue on page one today. In fairness to Dave Helling, he tried to put the issue in perspective, but the reality is that if this story were told exactly as it should be, it would not make page one.

And that story was reported, accurately and without fanfare, by the respected trade publication Broadcasting and Cable in June:

Obama Does Not Support Return of Fairness Doctrine

Just to be sure, B&C re-quizzed the campaign just before Election Day and got an identical response.

Now, is it possible Obama will change his mind? I guess he might, but why would he? Because he's continually changing his mind? Well, let's look at that for a minute. Here are the three best-known Obama campaign flip-flops. Let's examine each and see if we see any precedents for going south on his campaign promise not to revive the Fairness Doctrine.

1. Campaign finance. Obama filled out a questionnaire in the fall of 2007 saying that if he were nominated, he would "aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election."
   
   He didn't, because by the time he was nominated it was clear he was turning the page and starting a new chapter on raising money -- staggering sums of money donated $90 at a time. After Obama set a fundraising record in September, columnist George Will chuckled at the idea, raised by John McCain, that Obama would now be "pressured to give favors to his September givers. The contributions by the new givers that month averaged $86."

2. "Drill baby drill!" Obama's mind-change on drilling for oil offshore was genuine, and everyone knows why he did it: to defuse a growing problem for his campaign.
   
   "The Republicans and the oil companies have been really beating the drums on drilling," Obama told the Washington Post in late July. "And so we don't want gridlock. We want to get something done."
   
   Drilling is at least related to a huge issue: energy. What huge issue is the fairness doctrine related to? Tell me. You can't.

3. Town-hall debates. This is the flip-flop that, if you read TV Barn much, you already know sticks in my craw. After initially suggesting that he wouldn't mind doing a series of summer town-hall debates with McCain, Obama played it safe and backed out. I've written plenty on this one already and won't rehash.

In each case, we see a pattern of the Obama campaign bending to political expediency. It said it might sit down with McCain to talk finances until it realized it didn't have to. It said it would avoid drilling offshore, then backed away when the polls indicated the public wanted him to be more flexible. And finally, it decided not to barnstorm with McCain because it calculated the potential political damage would be less than if he said something harmful during a town-hall (though I still contend he was overly wary of McCain's supposed prowess in town halls, as we all learned eventually).

Now, I have one question for the people convinced Obama will restore the Fairness Doctrine: In what scenario would it be politically expedient to bring back a controversial regulation that members of his own party oppose, would endanger his allies in the Air America network (not to mention NPR) and give a bottomless barrel of material to people who have nothing better to do all day than complain loudly?

No such scenario exists.

Instead, I suspect that the Obama team has in mind a 21st-century response to unfair attacks on the administration. Armed with the largest donor email list in history, Team Obama will pursue a strategy it began in the fall campaign, which will be to Miltonize the critics of Obama.

I am naming this tactic in honor of the great WGN Radio host Milton Rosenberg, whose "Extension 720" was pummeled by attacks this fall, not once but twice, by partisans outraged that he would have on his airwaves authors of books critical of Obama. These were no ordinary supporters of the Democratic nominee but people who had signed up for an action-alert mailing list, who asked that they be notified any time that their man was attacked anywhere in the media.

I was not happy with Team Obama's tactics and said so in this commentary on TV Barn. But I can't deny that it was effective. When Rosenberg booked his second hostile Obama author, he made sure a lefty critic was in the studio as well.

Obama's campaign still has that mailing list of people, and I am sure they are just as ready to spring into action now as they were in the fall. And for that reason, I suspect the action-alert list will continue to be used to make sure Obama's critics are held in check.

Makes sense, doesn't it? Obama Nation can do a lot of damage, overwhelming radio station switchboards, flooding TV station in-boxes, pummeling letters sections of newspapers. And none of it has to be sanctioned by the law.

Obama's mailing list is its own fairness doctrine. And if you think Rush Limbaugh isn't thinking about what that mailing list could do to him -- especially in the big cities -- well, you probably aren't very good at chess, either.

Comments

[Ben Boychuk]

I think the Fairness Doctrine hullaballoo is really shorthand for the evolving debate about federal regulation of the public airwaves in general. As you rightly note, Obama has repeatedly said he doesn't support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine (although it remains an open question, it seems to me, whether he would sign a such a bill if it landed on his desk. Obama said he opposes gay marriage on religious grounds but he also opposed Prop. 8 -- he knows how to play a double game as well as anyone.)

What Obama has said -- and the statement appears in the news story -- is that he supports "opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible." In practice, that would mean what? The story barely scratches the surface of local content rules. Jesse Walker delves further into some of the regulatory possibilities in the November issue of Reason: http://www.reason.com/news/show/129228.html

Also, Aaron, could you expound on what you mean by "Team Obama" pursuing the strategy you outline above? It's one thing for a political campaign to spur supporters to flood Milt Rosenberg's phone lines with angry calls. Your scenario seems plausible to me. But how would an incumbent presidential administration carry it out without coming to legal and political grief?

[BarackObama.com maintains the Obama Action Wire, whose stated purpose is "a grassroots rapid response group for supporters to fight smears, spread the truth, push back on misleading media, and take positive action."--AB]

[Mark Jeffries]

And it needs to emphasized that it wasn't the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine that made talk radio go right--it was the exodus of music formats to FM, the satellite technology that made talk radio feasible in small town America (and made it sound like it was coming from the local station and not far away) and the fact that Limbaugh, whether you like him or not, was syndicated talk radio's first real star (no, Larry King, being on at 2 a.m. doesn't make you a star). Radio being imitative, everybody else had to have their right-wing blowhard and the milder left-of-center talk hosts couldn't stick--and even the lefties who were just as bombastic and comparably popular locally couldn't get syndicated (like Bob Lassiter and Jay Marvin).

Meanwhile, it should be pointed out that Amy Goodman, who makes Rachel Maddow sound like Sean Hannity and considers NPR corporate sellouts, has been critical of Obama frequently on her program for being too centrist. You can't win.

[Bryan Farris]

Obama won't be the one leading the charge on this issue. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer (who are already on record in support) are going to pass it in their respective houses. So the only thing standing athwart the return of the Fairness Doctrine is an Obama veto. And the list of topics where Obama has vocally broken with his party's wishes is virtually non-existent.

[COUGHjoeliebermanCOUGH.....sorry, Bryan, but as Nate Silver pointed out yesterday, Obama is the sole reason Lieberman got his old Senate chairmanship back with ease. He's the decider now.--AB]

[Joe]

Could not agree more. I still don't understand conservative radio's rather spontaneous fear that there will be any serious push from the Dems to bring back the Fairness Doctrine. There won't.

This article makes a couple other good points:

http://www.meltingpotproject.com/mpp/the-paranoia-of-the-right-redux.html

[Andy]

Beyond the obvious "playing to the base," there's another reason Rush and some other hosts are playing this up so much. They're looking to restore their illusion of power.

After the '06 congressional disaster, Rush admitted ruefully on the air that he'd been "carrying water" for Republicans. Early this year, he and the others put all of their capital on the line trying NOT to get John McCain elected, to the point of claiming they wouldn't support him if he were nominated. Then, after he was nominated, they had to do an almost complete 180, only to see him lose the general election by the biggest margin in 12 years.

So now they're looking for an issue where they can claim to have made a difference. Lacking anything real, they invent a straw man (Fairness Doctrine) that they can flog. Then, when it becomes clear that the issue is going nowhere in Congress (as has been clear from the beginning), they can claim its "defeat" was due to their pressure, and suddenly they're relevant again.

[John Gallagher]

The airwaves are not privately held by individuals, but are the collective property of we the people.
They should be regulated by the government to allow other voices to be heard It is not like there is a comparable alternative. It is either the Fairness Doctrine or it is some viewpoints are heard totally, and others ignored totally

[eb1e]

John:

Then just go to NBC/CBS/ABC/NPR/AirAmerica/Most local news talk if you want liberalism.

Besides, many in the media openly shilled for Obama (As Mark Halperin of time mentioned recently as "shameful"). Much of that was an effort on their part to help preserve their diminishing power , with the F-D as their tool for stifling opposing voices.
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=C5D8C5D4-18FE-70B2-A8220008CD2D5EA4