(EDITOR'S NOTE: Since my July 8 story about the New York Times’ anti-Obama slant, the paper’s coverage has not improved. As a result, Beyond Chron will run a regular weekly feature, Beyond Times, critiquing the paper’s misleading coverage of the presidential race.)

According to the Sunday, July 13 New York Times, John McCain models himself after Theodore Roosevelt while Obama’s supporters on the “far left” are “disgusted” with their candidate. In addition, Matt Bai writes in the Sunday Times Magazine that both Obama and McCain are agents of reform, notwithstanding the latter’s support for Bush economic, environmental, and Iraq policies.

Welcome to the world of New York Times presidential coverage, in which Obama and McCain agree on most issues and where, poll numbers notwithstanding, both face equal challenges in winning Latino, women, and working-class votes.

Obama and the “Far-Left”

When the phrase “far left” makes its way into a traditional media headline, watch out. Such was the case with the Times’ July 13 story describing how “far left” supporters of Barack Obama are already “disgusted” with his alleged “shifting positions.”

William Yardley’s article cites a completely random group of “far left” individuals, embodied by Martha Shade, a Portland artist who acknowledges that she is “pretty far out of the mainstream.”

Why would the Times devote a major Sunday news story to a person who is in no way typical of the larger electorate? Probably because she gave such great negative quotes about Obama, such as, “ I can’t even listen to him anymore,” and that “for all this ‘audacity of hope’ stuff, it’s blah, blah, blah.”

Shade was a member of the Green Party before registering Democratic to vote for Obama in the weeks before Oregon’s May primary. So she was only a Democrat for at most three months before becoming “disgusted” with the Party’s standard-bearer.

McCain as Roosevelt

While the main Sunday Obama story focused on his problems with the left, the Times’ front-page piece on McCain was framed by the candidate’s self-description as a Republican in the Theodore Roosevelt mode. It concluded with McCain’s assertion that “government should take care of those in America who can not take care of themselves.”

Nobody in the McCain article is quoted questioning whether the candidate’s record is comparable to that of Roosevelt. Nor is there any attempt to assess how McCain’s voting record conflicts with his statement that government should help those--like the 40 million without health care, those facing foreclosure, and Iraqi war veterans--who cannot help themselves.

The Times’ July 13 McCain piece allows the candidate to define himself in the most positive of terms. It is fitting that the story continues on page 20, right above the headline “Obama Backers on the Far Left Cry Foul.”

Nobody of any political persuasion is quoted “crying foul” about John McCain.

Obama = McCain

Matt Bai’s July 13 Sunday Times Magazine article relies on the media’s favorite “framing”---the alleged equivalency between the two candidates. As I noted on July 8, this desire to find false equivalencies equates McCain’s total shift in his positions on Bush’s tax cuts, offshore oil drilling, and immigration reform with Obama’s claim that he would be “refining” his stance on Iraq.

Here, Bai sees both candidates as political reformers, who are only separated by different visions of reform.

According to Bai, McCain “takes a personal and confrontational approach toward reform, which he sees fundamentally as a matter of overhauling the rules that govern Washington.” In contrast, Obama “casts reform as something that primarily congeals outside Washington, which is why he started to sound a little like the Doobie Brothers during the primaries, invoking a movement that was taking it to the streets.”

Bai’s analogy says absolutely nothing about the stakes of the 2008 race. We have one candidate (McCain) who opposes universal health care, will accept another 100 years in Iraq, seeks to extend tax cuts for the wealthy, is rabidly anti-choice, supports coastal offshore drilling, and has given up on comprehensive immigration reform.

Obama’s views differ from McCain’s on all these key issues and more.

Bai’s emphasis on the false similarities between McCain and Obama, like Yardley’s focus on a completely unrepresentative Obama “supporter,” does more to mislead than inform. And this has become all too typical in the Times in a presidential contest that l has months to go.