Fox News: Obama’s Martyrdom?

In the midst of Lent, in order to pass his health care plan, the Prez is going to carry out an exemplary new station of the cross: At 6 pm he will be interviewed by Bret Baier on Fox News, the channel “cursed” by the White House … Real contrition or media super-gesture?

There is Christianness in Barack Obama. Furthermore, this past week shows the extent to which the White House is orchestrating the dramatic ascent up Golgotha, which must lead to a vote on the bill, possibly by Friday — that is if Nancy Pelosi has her 217 representatives, which is still in question. “Hopes but not votes,” say the malicious.

Yes, everything, absolutely everything, will have been done in order to pass the bill. And, the U.S. is following this particular Stations of the Cross with interest. It is not just impulsive golf players who fascinate the American idea of redemption. Flagellated presidents stimulate the imagination, and 44 is counting on this to capture attention, create an audience and, especially, convince. He hopes for their complicity, at the minimum. Perhaps even empathy.

The preceding Stations of the Cross this week set the tone. 1) 44 postponed his official trip to Indonesia yielding to pressure from lawmakers. 2) Obama had to take his wife and girls off Air Force One, instead of enjoying having the opportunity to take them to Indonesia, one of his childhood homes, as he had planned. 3) Tuesday, while on his way to make a speech in Cleveland, he shared his time on Air Force One with Dennis Kucinich, a restive and disagreeable Democrat. 4) He had to put aside his natural modesty and recount the story of Natoma — a woman who had been cured of cancer and was there to greet him and testify, and who, after being a victim of insurers with prohibitive fees, had just learned that she had leukemia and …

Last known station: Fox News for an interview. A martyrdom? An act of contrition? More like a large-scale exercise in penitence. In this strongly anticipated media gesture, Barack Obama is “also” going to speak to the conservative Democratic electorate hooked on Fox News and shocked by the exclusion of their news channel by the Obama’s administration’s media agenda. For months, the White House’s comments on the station had never been tough enough, as Anita Dunn said, for this network which “was not a true news channel” but rather a Republican disinformation tool. War is never easy, and Fox News is watched by numerous Democrats, not all of who are convinced of 44’s actions.

Tonight’s interview will also be devoted to the small steps by taken by the two camps that led to this thawing of relations. Two in particular led to a breakthrough. On March 4, Roger Ailes, chief of the Fox News network, recognized that the White House could have “legitimate concerns.” And in February, a gap was opened by Michelle Obama, who came to defend her plan against obesity in an interview with Mike Huckabee and thus moved a pawn on the chessboard of her husband’s media strategists. They can say a big thank you to the one in whose political moves they have not always delighted.