The St. Petersburg Times celebrates Obama victory on stimulus package (Updated x2)

Curious about the coverage of the stimulus bill in the The St. Petersburg Times, I went in search of its online coverage.

Wes Allison wrote the news story, which amounts to a qualified celebration of "a resounding victory for Barack Obama."

Unfortunately I can't be surprised at coverage that omits criticisms of the bill from the Congressional Budget Office and "a range of respected economists." At least not from the Times.

This is a front page story, mind you, without any discernible "news analysis" or "opinion" tag. So the straight news is telling us that Obama achieved "an impressive display of political muscle and congressional pliability just three weeks, three days into his presidency."

"Impressive." Reads like editorial judgment to me. "Just three weeks, three days." Almost as if the writer is informing you that such impressive victories are extra-impressive if they come early. Again, an editorial judgment.

And not just any editorial judgment. Allison serves up editorial judgment at odds with much of mainstream punditry, which sees Obama as having misstepped in a number of ways depending on who makes the editorial judgment.

No worries, Times readers. The new pres is doing a fine job, even if the old press has lost any knack for objectivity it once possessed (look for a subsequent post exploring the use of "impressive display" in the news).

So we have a clue where Allison stands regarding Obama. The rest of the story tends to reinforce the slant.


Paragraph 5:

(D)espite Obama's aggressive outreach. Republican leaders pounded the package ...

Obama's "aggressive outreach" consisted of nothing more than an initial plan calling for a considerable role for tax cuts as part of the stimulus package along with make-nice meetings with Republicans. Obama then handed the bill off to Democratic leaders in Congress, who promptly made it a considerably more partisan bill. More on that later. Meanwhile, "aggressive outreach" passes for gross and misleading hyperbole.

Paragraph 6:

Clumsy infighting over spending cuts demanded by the relatively narrow Democratic margin in the Senate nearly caused a revolt among liberal Democrats in the House, just as House and Senate negotiators were gathering to ink the deal.

Hopefully Allison refers to the margin in the voting, for the party margins in the Senate haven't been this wide since 1979. Allison's earlier statement about the "impressive victory" seems ridiculous in that light. Practically all Obama has to do is please all the Democrats and he can pass whatever he likes through the Senate.

But then we get to paragraph 8:

All of which combined to take some of the luster off Friday's passage and speaks to the relative inexperience of the Obama administration, even though the president, vice president and their top aides all came from Capitol Hill.

Now he tells us! Thank heavens for the inverted pyramid structure and newspaper readers' not coincidental tendency to pay greatest attention to the first few paragraphs. Though this paragraph communicates a key aspect of the politics surrounding the stimulus bill, Allison's lead omits any hint of it.

The next few paragraphs descend into the bizarre.

Allison thinks Obama "miscalculated" (objective judgment?) by not stumping for the plan in public to counter Republican attacks on the bill. Again, given that congressional Democrats worked over the bill to get rid of most of its initial bipartisanship, how was Obama supposed to defend the changes without shooting himself in the foot? Allison's account explicitly suggests that the Republican attacks on the bill were largely unfounded ("some false"--no examples, as far as I can tell). Somehow the Associated Press, not exactly Fox News, found an array of reputable economists to disparage the bill, albeit the version Obama will sign into law. The early version certainly drew its share of criticism from economists, however.

As the story progresses, the story leaks more mitigating detail, even slipping in another editorial judgment that House Republicans were "justifiably" piqued when Pelosi largely cut them out of the legislative process. Allison says "some Republican amendments were eventually adopted." THOMAS, a government Web site established partly to aid in tracking legislation, and Opencongress.org only list eight House amendments to HR 1 ("American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009").

In order:
14 (actually 95, judging from the description), offered by Bill Shuster (R-PA). Passed.
16 (actually 109, judging from the description) offered by Randy Neugebauer (R-TX). Failed.
17 (actually 172, judging from the description), offered by Maxine Waters (D-CA). Passed.
18 (actually 132, judging from the description) offered by Jeff Flake (R-AZ). Failed.
19 (actually 198, judging by the description), offered by Larry Kissel (D-NC). Passed.
20 (actually 22, judging from the description), offered by Todd Russell Platts (R-PA) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD). Passed.
21 (actually 188, judging from the description), offered by Aaron Schock (R-IL) and Adam Smith (D-WA). Passed.
22 (actually 195, judging from the description), offered by Dave Camp (R-MI) and Eric Cantor (R-VA). Failed.

Shuster's bill does not seem particularly significant. One wonders which Republican amendments Allison had in mind. Perhaps he considered amendments proposed by Republicans in the Senate, after the bill was out from under Pelosi's thumb.

Descriptions and alternative numbers obtained here.

Most of the remainder of the story consists of spin cautioning against a premature obituary for Obama bipartisanship. That aspect of the story somewhat contradicts the lead. One could say that Allison puts his big "but" at the end of the story.


Update:

Power Line serves up the perfect accompaniment to my post, complete with a nifty cartoon from Michael Ramirez.

Update 2:
Corrected a few typos and rephrased a sentence or two to slightly moderate my criticism of the news story.