The Washington Post Contributes to Fenty Loss

Responsibility for losing the September 14, 2010 Democratic primary election for Mayor of the District of Columbia falls squarely on the shoulders of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty. Fenty managed to squander the goodwill that led to his winning every single one of DC's precincts four years ago. But, I think there is another culprit as well. One that can easily be described in terms to which parents can relate. While Fenty may have been the perpetrator of his own demise, The Washington Post, especially its editorial board, contributed by playing the role of over-indulgent parents to a spoiled child.

Throughout Fenty's term, the Post has behaved as a parent who, despite a need to make constant amends for a child's transgressions, believes the child can do no wrong. Soon after Fenty took office, the Post was alerted to the fact that Fenty's Academic Plan for the schools had been largely plagiarized. The Post ignored the story until it was publicized elsewhere. When the Post's editorial page finally weighed in, it was mostly for the purpose of damage control. The idea that anyone should be punished for the plagiarism was dismissed.

Soon afterwards, the Post was actually a co-conspirator as Fenty broke District law in his handling of his selection of Michelle Rhee as DCPS Chancellor. Fenty revealed his choice to the Post -- under ground rules that allowed only Rhee supporters to be interviewed -- prior to disclosing it to the DC Council or the legally-required review panel. In fact, the Post's news coverage and accompanying supportive editorial were how most DC residents, including Council members, learned of the selection. The Post essentially played the role of Fenty's press department.

Such was the pattern of the Post with regard to Fenty -- and by extension, Michelle Rhee -- throughout Fenty's term. When Fenty's twin sons turned up at Lafayette Elementary School, having secured two highly sought after out-of-boundary spots without participating in the OOB lottery, Fenty and Rhee refused to discuss the issue. Yet, the Post's editorial page was able to deliver an exculpatory explanation on their behalf. When Rhee told Fast Company magazine that "I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school", she refused to talk about it to the Post's education reporter Bill Turque. But, the Post's editorial board not only was able to talk to Rhee, but come to her defense. Turque, in his reaction to being scooped by his own paper's editors, noted that "... DCPS has a guaranteed soft landing spot for uncomfortable or inconvenient disclosures –- kind of a print version of the Larry King Show." Turque wrote that Fenty and Rhee were "gaming the system by using the editorial page this way".

When a Post-sponsored opinion poll showed Fenty lagging well behind challenger Vincent C. Gray, the Post's editors broke the newspaper's embargo on the poll results to hurriedly publish an editorial defending Fenty from cronyism charges. The editorial ignored reporting in the Post's own news pages -- relying instead on information provided by the Fenty campaign -- to misstate relevant facts and twist the story in Fenty's favor. Fenty would go on to repeatedly mention the Post editorial while defending his handling of contracts awarded to his fraternity brothers. The irony of his relying on an editorial that relied on information supplied by his campaign never seemed to occur to him.

The Post's initial editorial endorsement of Fenty's reelection was one of the earliest endorsement's in the paper's history, perhaps targeting Washingtonians before they left the city on August vacations. When Fenty's campaign still failed to gain traction, the Post's editors weighed in with what was essentially a second endorsement during the final weekend before the primary election. There appears to be little that the Post was unwilling to do on Fenty's behalf.

Regardless of its intentions, the Post -- and again, especially its editorial board -- has not served Fenty well. The Post has protected Fenty from his mistakes. Essentially, the editors have behaved like parents making a large contribution to a school's renovation fund while mentioning that they hope their son's involvement in a recent underage drinking escapade won't hurt his college recommendations. Subsequently, Fenty -- much like the spoiled progeny of such parents might -- has given little concern for the consequences of his actions. With the Post -- in its role of mom and dad -- always ready to use its significant influence to protect him, Fenty believed he could ignore realities that he otherwise would have been forced to address. Perhaps this is why he seems to have been taken by surprise by the animosity existing towards him among the Districts residents. Previously he had the luxury of ignoring such feelings.

As parents, we know that occasionally the best course of action is to show a little tough love. As ironic as it sounds, there are times we can harm our children by protecting them. The Post may well have been more helpful to Fenty if it had been less willing to rush to his defense. The Mayor has spent the last few weeks in a failed attempt to convince District voters that he has learned from his mistakes. The Post has yet to make such an effort, but hopefully it too has learned from this experience. Unfortunately, all available evidence suggests that being a Post editor means never having to say you're sorry.