The World Tour

This USA Today report from Berlin is all too typical of the fawning MSM coverage that has accompanied The Chosen One’s "World Tour" of the Middle East and Europe (keep in mind that the paragraphs that follow are intended to be a news item, not an op-ed piece):

BERLIN (AP) — Europe is about to give Barack Obama one of the grandest of stages for statesmanship.

In this city where John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton all made famous speeches, Obama will find himself stepping into perhaps another iconic moment Thursday as his superstar charisma meets German adoration live in shadows of the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate. He then travels to Paris and London where he can expect to be greeted with similar adulation.

It's not only Obama's youth, eloquence and energy that have stolen hearts across the Atlantic. For Europeans, there have always been two Americas: one of cynicism, big business and bullying aggression, another of freedom, fairness and nothing-is-impossible dynamism.

If President Bush has been seen as the embodiment of that first America, Obama has raised expectations of a chance for the nation to redeem itself in the role that — at various times through history — Europe has loved, respected and relied upon.

"Americans need a change — and what's good for America is good for the whole world," said Maike Smerling, a physician who was born and raised in the former East Germany.

It appears that the much of the MSM has made a conscious decision to swing the US election in favor of an inexperienced and truly untested politician. A politician who little more than 4 years ago was a lowly Illinois State Senator. A man who has never developed a piece of significant Federal legislation, has never worked across party lines on any contentious issue, has never been intimately involved in any foreign policy initiative of substance, has never held an executive or management position of any stature, never run a government agency, a military unit, or a small business. A man whose personal associations over the past 20 years are cause for concern, a “constitutional law professor” who has never written any substantive scholarly article or book (other than books about himself), a community activist whose work in Chicago created housing that was so poorly run it was shut down by the Federal government, but not before it enriched his friends and political contributors (e.g., convicted criminal, Tony Resko).

But no worries. Barack Obama is a rock star, and like squealing teenagers, the MSM network anchors and major left-leaning newspapers embarrass themselves by refusing to address any of the issues that are implied by the preceding paragraph. No hard questions and never a substantive follow-up. After all, probing meaningful issues and asking hard questions is a “distraction” to the real work of getting the Chosen One elected.

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Update:

Even with the fawning coverage by network anchors and US-based editors, it appears that the Obama campaign is skittish about allowing their candidate to meet with reporters in ad hoc interviews on his "world tour." Andrea Mitchell of ABC News (certainly not a conservative voice) complained: "He didn't have reporters with him, he didn't have a press pool, he didn't do a press conference while he was on the ground in either Afghanistan or Iraq."

Barack Obama is very good at looking good, even better when delivering a prepared speech, but a mere mortal when answering questions in an ad hoc manner. Maybe that’s why he often answers the few hard questions that are posed to him in less than an articulate manner, often exhibiting factual errors or contradictory points of view (waffling) within the same answer.

Haven't seen any of that on the MSM? Hmmmm, I wonder why?