Politico's write-up of Barack Obama's Puerto Rican trip depicted the President as a conquering hero making his long-awaited return to the "adoring island." Carrie Budoff Brown, in her June 14 article headlined: "An Adoring Island Welcomes Obama" painted scenes of jubilation as she wrote Obama was "greeted by thousands of cheering Puerto Ricans," and added: "Much of San Juan appeared to stand still for a few hours, soaking in the brief presidential appearance." Brown also observed: "Peopled held up signs showing Obama's face superimposed on Superman's body."
Carrie Budoff Brown
By Tom Blumer | June 14, 2011 | 10:58 AM EDT
Many people, including yours truly, believe that one of the primary reasons for the Politico's existence is to carry negative stories about Democrats and leftists which the rest of the establishment press then mostly chooses to ignore ("Why should we cover that? It's at the Politico already").
President Obama's more than half-empty campaign fundraising stop in Miami Monday is a case in point. As far as I can tell, only the Politico's Carrie Budoff Brown ("Empty seats: Obama fundraiser underwhelms") and Mary Bruce at ABC's Political Punch blog, whose item was also referenced at ABC's The Note, covered the politically embarrassing situation.
By Ken Shepherd | January 26, 2011 | 3:02 PM EST
"[F]or all the surface civility [of the State of the Union], Obama wants to pick a fight, or at least draw a stark contrast, between his jobs-centric philosophy and the GOP’s determination to cut government first and ask questions later."
That's how Politico's Glenn Thrush and Carrie Budoff Brown described the main difference between the president and his Republican congressional opposition in a story filed early Wednesday morning.
Of course, Obama's State of the Union address carried a fresh call for soaking the nation's richest taxpayers and plowing millions into white elephant spending projects such as high-speed rail, but it apparently didn't occur to Thrush and Budoff Brown that Obama's prescription may be to "grow government first and ignore questions later" given the failure of the first stimulus package of his administration.
By Ken Shepherd | November 12, 2008 | 3:00 PM EST
The "Obama Team Moves to Keep Its Distance From Lobbyists," the page A4 Washington Post headline insisted. Yet as the article made clear, the spatial separation is walking, if not throwing distance.
The November 12 story by staffer Michael Shear began by noting that Obama "campaigned as an anti-Washington candidate" and that his transition team "made it clear" that the president-elect "would seek to build on that theme over the next two months."
As evidence of that, Shear explained the transition team's rules "that restrict how federal lobbyists can participate" in the Obama transition. Yet Shear failed to note how the standard has shifted over the course of Obama's campaign (emphasis mine):
By Ken Shepherd | July 10, 2008 | 6:27 PM EDT
Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is walking a "minefield" on the abortion issue with recent hints that he's taking baby steps to the right on the issue. By doing so, he's risking the alienation of the absolutist activists in the abortion rights movement, Carrie Budoff Brown of Politico reported today.
But given Obama's much-reported efforts at courting evangelicals and other historic constituents of the GOP coalition, it certainly makes sense that the Illinois senator would seek to soften his image with pro-lifers to win over a few of them, or at the very least dampen the outrage among the pro-life community that might swell their ranks at the polls voting for Sen. John McCain.
Yet instead of considering how a potential problem at the polls for Obama and other Democrats in swing states might be abortion rights extremist activists, Budoff Brown painted Obama as facing danger by straying too far from the strict NOW/NARAL/Planned Parenthood line (emphasis mine):