ROK Drop favorite Michael Breen writes in the Korea Times that critics of President Trump’s North Korea policy need to show more patience. Good luck with that ever happening, but he does accurately depict the media environment that is driving much of the negative criticism against Trump:
And yet, a majority of experts have criticized the American president. Why? Failure to secure a more detailed agreement. Talk about impatience.
This criticism is widespread, despite the fact that everyone accepts that, in contrast to many summit meetings where the top leaders sign off on agreements reached between their respective teams, this one was intended to kickstart a process.
So why was the analysis not about a good start?
I believe there are two parts to the answer and they are not easily separated. One is the good faith expert viewpoint and the other is the media environment in which it is expressed. (…………)
The error in my opinion derives from media obsession with the person of the American president. This both slants reporting and media commentary and influences the way experts deliver their opinions.
If truth be told, media love Donald Trump. He just has to scratch his head and it’s newsworthy. Underlying almost all coverage is a view that he is morally and psychologically unfit to be president. (This is partly because he is a Republican, a party that has almost zero support among news reporters, and partly because, well, he is kind of unorthodox.)
The daily Trump story satisfies on the titillation level ― look what the idiot has done now ― and on the media self-righteousness level ― be warned, this is serious, this man has his finger on the button.
Had Barack Obama held this summit with Kim and achieved the same result, he would probably be up for his second Nobel Peace Prize. But because it’s Trump, I expect that even if the North does de-nuclearize, sign a Korean war peace treaty, and open an embassy in Pyongyang and open the gulag, Trump will still be found wanting. [Korea Times]
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