Last Sunday’s D&C editorial pages focus on Barack Obama. Not McCain and Obama. But Obama.

One column is entitled “Triangulation - Obama Style”, written by Clarence Page. It’s not linked on the D&C website, but here’s the column in the Wichita, Kansas paper: http://www.kansas.com/205/story/459232.html. Here is Clarence Page’s column from the Chicago Tribune – it looks to be the same as the one in Kansas.

What’s really interesting about this is that the D&C presented an edited version that made this op ed far more critical of Obama (and much kinder to McCain) than the Wichita Eagle column or Chicago Tribune linked above. The Eagle’s piece was entitled “Obama Seeking Middle.” The Chicago Tribune’s title? “Barack Obama and his surge to the middle”.

Here are some interesting changes between the Wichita & Chicago versions vs. the D&C’s:

1. Obviously, the Kansas and Chicago titles are more neutral, the D&C more critical.

2. Here’s a line omitted - (the prior line included for context) from “That’s OK.”

They can’t say that anymore. Now they say he’s flip-flopped. That’s OK. If you want
to please everybody, you don’t belong in politics.

3. Completely omitted:

Liberal bloggers such as Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post have howled that Obama is selling out the left. But viewed another way, he’s buying into the middle. He’s reaching for what Colin Powell has called the “sensible center,” that big, broad terrain in the political middle where most American voters live.

4. Rewritten to delete the critique of McCain:

He’s a calculating politician,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a McCain ally, said of Obama recently. Yet McCain has his own easily remembered flip-flops. He opposed extending President Bush’s tax cuts before he more recently favored them. He has softened his opposition to offshore oil drilling. He shifted to a more punitive stance on immigration after a bill he favored failed to pass.

5. Omitted:

He navigated the primaries as a Rorschach candidate, an inkblot test in which Democratic voters tended to see what they wanted to see, not always where he actually stood on various issues.

6. Omitted from “That’s sensible” on.

On Iraq, for example, he told NBC’s Tim Russert last September that his Iraq pullout plans would be subject to changing “conditions on the ground.” That’s sensible. A candidate who is unwilling to consider changing conditions would be castigated as too stubborn.

7. Also omitted:

On another hot-button issue, Obama said he did not think “mental distress” should qualify as a threat to “the health of the mother” in late-term abortions. Yet there’s no question that he’s a bigger ally of abortion rights than McCain, an avowed opponent.

8. But added to the D&C piece was extensive discussion of Obama’s handling of the recent FISA legislation. This actually seemed to be less critical of Obama, but doesn’t remove the overall increased critical perspective the column, in its revised form, seems to provide.

The Kansas piece ran on July 10th. The Chicago Tribune’s on July 9th. The D&C piece ran July 13th.

The second op-ed is entitled “Obama’s brand of liberalism is questionable” by Froma Harrop. Here too, the D&C chanaged the title. Harrop’s 7/13 piece as run in the San Antonio Journal was entitled “Obama’s Liberal Shiver.” In this op-ed, the last three paragraphs, critical of both Obama and his supporters, are omitted. But unlike the Page piece, the substance and flavor are not changed by this modification.

So the D&C takes a somewhat favorable editorial by Page (in which Page seems to believe that Obama’s approach is pragmatic and sensible) and makes it critical, omitting in particular criticism of McCain as someone who has changed position. And in contrast, it presents Harrop, with different reasons as to why Obama is lacking.

What’s really lacking is any pretense of fairness. Why is the D&C so invested in protecting McCain and bringing down Obama? The myth of the “liberal media” strikes again.

The original D&C column is below the fold:

edited column?