THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING PRESIDENCY - AT 8:01 A.M. ET:  What else can you call it?  The man in the White House, only nine months in office, seems determined to diminish himself and the trust he holds.

How else do we account for this obsession with Fox News?  How else do we account for the president giving valuable face time to Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann of MSNBC, two minor leaguers who have fewer viewers than letters in their names?

Fox News dutifully, and with as much neutrality as possible, reports the president's journalistic favor-giving: 

President Obama spoke publicly for the first time Wednesday about his administration's portrayal of Fox News as an illegitimate news organization -- only to say he's not "losing sleep" over the controversy.

Obama, in an interview with NBC, at first attempted to deflect a question about the White House's criticism of Fox News, saying "the American people are a lot more interested in what we're doing to create jobs or how we're handling the situation in Afghanistan."

The interviewer then pressed, noting that Obama's advisers have targeted the network openly.

"I think that what our advisers simply said is, is that we are going to take media as it comes," Obama said. "And if media is operating, basically, as a talk radio format, then that's one thing. And if it's operating as a news outlet than that's another. But it's not something I'm losing a lot of sleep over."

Given the intensity of the White House assault on Fox, apparently he is.

Several top White House advisers have gone on other channels to criticize Fox News' coverage of the administration, dismiss the network as the mouthpiece of the Republican Party and urge other news organizations not to treat Fox News as a legitimate news station.

COMMENT:  True, other presidents have despised particular news organizations.  President Kennedy, for example, cancelled the White House subscription to the old New York Herald Tribune. 

But I think it's fair to say that we haven't seen such a concentrated attack on a news organization as we're seeing now.  If the White House wants to take issue with particular Fox reports, fine.  But to, in effect, delegitimize it as a news organization, is absurd.  It makes this president look small, something he seems to be working at. 

Americans don't like small presidents.  One of Harry Truman's problems was that, although he made some of the weightiest decisions of our age, he often came off as petty.  It was said of him, "He does the biggest things in the biggest ways and the littlest things in the littlest ways."  Obama is starting to look like the small-time Chicago pol that he actually is.  He needs a grown-up to sit down and explain his office to him.

October 22, 2009