Three
weeks after CBS’s 60 Minutes delivered a friendly sit-down with
President Barack Obama in which Steve Kroft gently chided him for being
too willing to compromise with Republicans, the show didn’t even attempt
a matching approach to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Instead,
Lesley Stahl relayed a portrait painted by liberals (“He’s working on
humanizing his image, and presenting himself as more reasonable”) as she
blamed him for “gridlock” and offered a caricature of Cantor as an
“inflexible” ideologue putting Tea Party politics ahead of passing
Obama’s beneficial policies.
Stahl abandoned any pretense of journalistic objectivity, repeatedly
pressing Cantor to “compromise” – to agree with Obama on the
rationality of raising taxes more, touting how even Ronald Reagan had
recognized the need to raise taxes.
