Sen. Obama: Not Really That Liberal?

Jeff Zeleny stretches hard to position Barack Obama as a more moderate candidate.

In his profile of Sen. Barack Obama, former Chicago Tribune-reporter-turned-Timesman Jeff Zeleny stretches hard to position Obama as not really that liberal, searching for instances in his brief voting record in which the Illinois senator wasn't a reliable liberal vote. In fact, the only time the Times seems to recognize liberals is when the paper is trying to center a potential Democratic presidential candidate (see Clinton, Hillary).


Mickey Kaus at Slate calls it a "comical" attempt to position Obama as an independent thinker, and Tom Maguire notes: "So Obama boldly stood with a mere 86 fellow Senators...."

However, TimesWatch appreciates Zeleny's previous paragraph, in which he actually measures a liberal politicians' political slant, which goes against the paper's usual practice of either calling liberal politicians "moderates" or not giving them an ideological label at all.

"According to a ranking by National Journal, Mr. Obama's voting record is more liberal than 82.5 percent of the Senate, compared with 79.8 percent for Mrs. Clinton. The American Conservative Union gave him a ranking of 8. By comparison, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, received a ranking of 83."