Kathleen Parker is not my favorite Washington Post columnist. I just wanted to say that up front, to get my own biases out in the open. But I have to give her credit, for stating some truth last Sunday on not one but two Sunday morning news shows. She said almost the same thing on both CBS' Face The Nation and NBC's The Chris Matthews Show. Such honesty from the Washington crowd -- especially from someone many label conservative -- is rare. So I wanted to give her some credit today.

Here she is on Matthews' show, after being asked by Chris whether President Obama has "the political staying power to get through this terrible time we're in right now, push his agenda and still be politically successful?" [I edited out inane interruptions from Matthews in the middle of Parker's answer. See the full transcript if interested, although you may have to select 3/8/09 to see it]:

Well, Chris, I don't -- I don't think anybody can answer that question right now. It's going to depend a great deal on what -- how these things go. But you know, right now [Obama's] not talking about raising taxes on everybody, he's talking about raising taxes on the top earners. So the vast majority... most people out there... right now who are in deep, deep trouble don't see this as a problem for them so much. They see he's doing something, he's putting some programs in place that are going to help us maybe, but we're going to wait and see. I think the debate that we're having here is so intensely driven by the next deadline and by the next day's news that... you know, the people out in the hustings are not -- are not talking about it in the same -- at the same level that we are.

She made the same point on Face The Nation, a bit more eloquently. [Only transcript available is in PDF format.]

Well, they're worried, but polls also show that the people are much more patient with -- this is huge. And they understand it's complicated. And President Obama has been in place, what, six weeks. And so while we in Washington are ready to, sort of, measure everything on a daily basis, I think, if you go out into the -- you know, out into the hustings you find that people are much less likely to demand answers immediately. Even President Obama said, look, the economy is not a speedboat. It's an ocean liner. You know, what we're trying to do is change the direction. And whatever changes we have will be gradual. It will be later down the road that we are in a different place. Of course, we're trying to not free-associate to the Titanic, but...

Now, the erudite among you will notice immediately that she's misusing the word "hustings" here. CBS may have taken mercy upon her, as in their official transcript the word appears as "(inaudible)," but if you listen to it, she clearly says "hustings." Maybe CBS needs a dictionary, too. (Ahem.) Because "in the hustings" or "into the hustings" is a meaningless phrase.

Hustings are (specifically) the physical platform a candidate for office speaks from while campaigning; or (generally, in modern usage) just "the campaign trail." Candidates speak "out on the hustings." But Parker is trying to equate the word with the crowds themselves, or the location of those crowds. Perhaps she thought of saying "flyover country" or "the boondocks," but decided they were too pejorative. But candidates go out to speak "on the hustings," not the locals who listen to such speeches. The audience is not "out on the hustings" or, locationally, "in the hustings," and the crowd itself does not equate to "the hustings." Only candidates speak "on the hustings," and I am not aware that President Obama is campaigning for any office right now.

But other than this minor grammatical gaffe, Parker's statement is astonishing, because for once someone from within the Beltway obviously realizes that the debate that they are all caught up in is not what the country is talking about. This self-awareness of the disconnect between the media types and the actual public is so rare as to be almost non-existent, which is why it deserves a spotlight, and our applause. I'll even overlook her gratuitous Titanic reference in doing so (ahem).

I've lost count of the media cycles and storylines that have happened since Barack Obama became president -- and which have turned out to be not just wrong but totally irrelevant. And, as Parker pointed out, he hasn't even been in office two months yet. Obama has shown a remarkable dexterity in rising above this fray and not becoming distracted by it, even when a New York Times reporter (do none of these people own dictionaries?!?) asked him whether he was "a socialist" recently.

While the media obsession this week, fed (as always) by the right wing, was "the stock market is still going down, I guess President Obama should just resign now and save us all the trouble," (I'm only slightly exaggerating), normal Americans had other worries outside the Beltway echo chamber. [Note: I wrote that before I noticed the stock market rally today, one assumes they'll come up with a new storyline and simply ignore what they've now been talking about for a week.] Because Parker is right -- the American people know the economy isn't going to turn around in a day or a week or a month. It's going to take a while, and people are patient (so far) with Obama's attempts to turn things around.

This astonishes the media no end. "Gosh, people aren't thinking what we're telling them to think," one can almost picture them saying in editorial meetings. And since I'm on the subject, the other fact which is just perplexing all these inside-the-Beltway reporters no end is: Obama is doing exactly what he told us he'd do out on the hustings (sorry, couldn't resist). Pretty much everything that Obama has done so far -- to the breathless surprise of reporters -- has been exactly what he promised out on the campaign trail.

The measure of how astonishing this is to seasoned reporters is the measure of distrust and cynicism that normally emanates from Washington. You would think that it would barely even be news, much less astonishing news, that an elected official begins his term by fulfilling campaign promises and pushing the agenda he ran on, but that's where we apparently are.

So "Brava!" to Kathleen Parker for daring to point out that the media empire has no clothes. She, and a few other intrepid reporters, have begun (slowly) to notice that there is a massive disconnect between what Washington obsesses over (which changes hourly, it seems), and what the rest of the country's priorities are.

Maybe change is coming to Washington, although it's obviously going to take some time. Maybe President Obama can change not only the political culture, but also the media culture. Here's a piece of advice for anyone inside the Beltway who wants to know what people are really thinking about and talking about "out there" -- get a map of the United States, put it on the wall, throw a dart at it, and then book plane tickets to the nearest city. Fly there, get out and talk to some people in a supermarket or a bar. Ask them what their priorities are for getting something done in Washington. Then file your report.

It certainly would beat talking about (just from the past week alone) whether Obama's hair is going grey, whether Michelle Obama's arms should be bared or not (doesn't the Second Amendment speak to this? Ahem.), and whether Rush Limbaugh is as big as his ego or not. It might even be some real "news" to report to America. Just a humble suggestion from outside the Beltway (but decidedly not from "the hustings").

[Program Note (Update from last Friday's column): The DNC has released its list of the top five slogans to put on a billboard in Rush Limbaugh's home town. They're not that great, I have to warn you. They reportedly got 50,000 entries, and these are the best five they could come up with? Sigh.]

-- Chris Weigant