Jon Stewart’s Criticism Of President Obama Continues To Grow
President Obama addressed the BP oil disaster to the nation last night, and received some pretty harsh criticism from commentators who are usually supportive of the administration. Well now you can include Jon Stewart among the growing list of White House critics, though last night The Daily Show host went after Obama’s apparent position switch on habeus corpus, extradition and the due process of terror suspects; ultimately comparing Obama’s chasing of Presidential powers to that of Frodo chasing his “precious.” Ouch.
It’s fair to say that, since he entered the public stage, Barack Obama has made a pretty favorable impression on Jon Stewart. Throughout the 2008 election, Stewart and his legion of loyal viewers were largely seen as supporters of Obama’s political efforts (and agenda.) But something has changed – and in the past few weeks and months, Stewart has become a far more vocal critic of the president (recently chiding his many photo ops and mocking his “complicated responses‘.)
But last night’s critique was different than those that preceded them – not because of what was said about the President, but the decision process that likely lead to the following segment (a video clip of which is embedded below.) The Daily Show tapes its show roughly around 5:30 every night. So when a newsworthy event occurs after their scheduled taping — such as the Oval Office address to the nation last night — Stewart and producers have to come up with an opening segment that feels newsworthy.
Its largely a coincidence that Stewart joined the chorus of formerly supportive cable new personalities criticizing the President, and no one should ever confuse Stewart with the left-of-center opinion media personalities like Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews.
When a Democratic president has lost the support Olbermann, Maddow, Matthews and now Jon Stewart, that’s not good news (for the White House.) That’s not to say that the game is over – there will certainly be many more opportunites for Obama to win back the support of this group (and many others.) But last night was not a good one for the White House.
