White House employs “Chicago way” against FOX News.

In 1972, I knew the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times—courageously pursuing the Watergate story—were right about Nixon being a gangster-president. But I worried about the power Nixon had, and about his intense hatred of his enemies. Could Nixon prevail and actually silence his media critics, many of whom wouldn’t touch the Watergate "caper" with a 10-foot poll? It was a truly scary time for America. Nixon was very popular, carrying 49 states that November.

Tom Bevan runs the website, RealClearPolitics, valuable because it covers opinion from both sides of our national debate, including the right. If people want both sides, he’s a great source. If they view liberal media alone—the major networks except FOX, the major print media except the Wall Street Journal—as sufficient, well then, why bother with RealClearPolitics? So Bevan has a self-interest in balanced coverage.

Still, I’m shaken by the intensity of Bevan’s attack on the White House for going after FOX News. I’m shaken because I think Bevan’s truly worried about the White House’s gangster-like (Chicagoan Bevan calls it “the Chicago way”) effort to crush America’s leading cable news network. If Bevan weren’t truly worried, why risk his site’s reputation for balanced coverage by going after the White House?

Here’s what bothers Bevan:

➢ Obama’s top two politicos, Chicagoans David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel, made clear on Sunday talk shows that White House efforts to delegitimize FOX News are deadly serious.

➢ Axelrod told George Stephanopoulos: "[FOX News] is not really a news station. It's not just their commentators but a lot of their news programming it's really not news it's pushing a point of view. " Axelrod also went out of his way to suggest to Stephanopoulos that ABC News adopt the White House strategy and not treat FOX News as legitimate. "The bigger thing is," Axelrod said, "other news organizations, like yours, ought not to treat them that way. We're not going to treat them that way. "

➢ Emanuel echoed the line to John King on CNN's State of the Union: "The way the president looks at it - we look at it - it's not a news organization so much as it has a perspective. And more importantly is not have the CNN's and others in the world basically be led and following FOX, as if what they're trying to do is a legitimate news organization, in the sense of both sides and a sense of valued opinion."

Bevan feels

the current presidency [depends entirely on] the President's personal popularity. President Obama has, out of necessity, become the Salesman-in-Chief for his progressive agenda. . . the White House . . . is [apparently] unable to brook criticism of the President . . . Thus FOX News is targeted as the enemy. [And, as] Axelrod and Emanuel made clear, they also want to drive a wedge between the rest of the media and FOX News, enlisting other television networks in the effort to paint FOX News as illegitimate.

All this prompts Bevan to editorialize:

And MSNBC doesn't push a certain "perspective?" . . .The White House is all for news organizations taking certain "perspec- tives" -- so long as they're favorable to the administration's agenda. It's actually quite brazen [for Axelrod and Emanuel to suggest] that ABC, CNN and other networks . . . join [the] White House's war to marginalize a competitor because it takes a "perspective" that displeases the President.

Such tactics may not be frowned upon by brass-knuckle operatives working for the political machine in a one party town. But it's different when you're the President. . . the White House's strategy may be the Chicago way, but it isn't the American way.