Four one-hour stop in New Orleans en route to a fundraiser for $ 3 million.
Snubbing the Dalai Lama.
The province has approved a secret agreement with drug manufacturers.
Freezing to a television channel.
Doing fundraisers over the last president. More golf, too.
President Barack Obama has done all these things - and more.
What is remarkable is what has not happened. These episodes have not become metaphors for personal and political Obama - or controversies consuming distraction from the rest of his agenda.
It is a sign that the echo chamber of media can be a funny thing, susceptible to the vagaries of the new arrest, and an illustration that, in politics, context is everything.
The conservative look with a mixture of indignation and amazement and wonder: Imagine the noise if George W. Bush had done these things?
He added quickly, with a hint of jealousy: How Obama get away with it?
"We have a joke. We will create a website: IfBushHadDoneThat.com, "former Bush adviser Ed Gillespie said. "The watchdogs are wound around his feet, sleeping soundly. ... The examples are endless: some silly, some serious."
Indeed, Bush has felt pain for secret meetings with oil industry, the politicization of the White House and spend too much time on his beloved bicycle. But it's not just Republicans who notice. Media observers note that the President is often kid-glove treatment from the press, Democrats and colleagues, in particular, interest groups of the left - the strongest critics of Bush's largest donors of 'Obama.
But others say there is a larger phenomenon at work - in line with the history of the media wrote about the presidency of Mr. Obama. For Bush, the theme was that of a big business Republican who led the name to the White House, so many stories about secret meetings and the energy of a certain laziness, intellectual and otherwise, is the theme will be replayed again and again.
Throughout history Obama has been more positive since the beginning: historical newcomer coming to shake up Washington. Thus, the negative circulating around Obama - as a feeling he was more flash than substance - means that the negative coverage he received, captured in a recent "Saturday Night Live" skit that mocked his lack of accomplishments in office.
"There are about may well be an unconscious effort on the part of media to give Obama a little slack because he is more lovable because he is the first African-American president. That plays into it, "says Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst at the University of Southern California.
Democrats find the complaints of Obama "getting a pass" hard to swallow given the way the press treated Bush - especially on the biggest mistake of his presidency, based on erroneous information that preceded the war in Iraq. Now, Obama aides say, the positive coverage simply reflects the fact that their efforts are successful.
"As our administration made progress on the agenda that Washington has ignored for too long, we expect that we'll get some news coverage of the progress that we like and some coverage difficult that we do not," White House Josh Earnest, a spokesman said. "This is not unlike the New Orleans Saints, who receive much of a good coverage of their perfect record so far - certainly better coverage than the [2-5 ] Redskins - but it does not mean that the saints have loved every story that was written about them since training camp. It goes with the territory. "
There are signs the friendly tone towards Obama is down. Example: A front-page article in The New York Times, noting that Obama's all-games FIBA attracted the wrath of the head of the National Organization for Women, which calls the games "worrying".
But here are other stories in which Obama seems to have obtained a pass:
New Orleans
As a candidate, Obama railed against the Bush administration's abandonment and neglect, then the people of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. He made five trips to the city campaign.
But as president, Obama has waited nearly nine months before visiting the Big Easy, has spent less than four hours on the ground there and then flew to San Francisco for a fundraiser Democratic 3 million dollars.
"Do not judge anyone on how much time they spent there. Judge what this administration has promised they would do, what they did every day and they continue to work to "press secretary Robert Gibbs, pointing to positive feedback from federal efforts under Obama.
For their part, Democrats can not see how Bush officials can collect lots of shade on everything related to New Orleans, given the way the Republican administration handled the initial response to Hurricane Katrina.
Management Press
When Obama administration moved in recent weeks to isolate and discredit Fox News as a wing of the Republican Party, there was little immediate howls of outrage - even fellow journalists of Fox Media.
The defenders of press and First Amendment advocates who jumped on the Bush administration to use military analysts to shape coverage of the war responded with a yawn at the announcement of the White House that he found Fox not be an organization of "legitimate news".
"If I had said on MSNBC that the White House said Obama on Fox, the hype is still ongoing," said Ari Fleischer, who was press secretary for Bush until 2003. "Instinctively, I would have known ... the media would have jumped to their feet to defend. I'm shocked it's not happening now. "
A veteran of the press agreed. "If George Bush had taken on MSNBC, this would have happened?" Said Phil Bronstein, editor at large of the San Francisco Chronicle. "It's a place where you can point to a difference in how I imagine Bush would be treated."
The politicization of the White House
Throughout the Bush administration's liberal critics warned that the hand of Bush political adviser Karl Rove spread the policy across all corners of government. Journalists are on alert for signs that the policy was to infect the work of federal agencies. A person appointed received in hot water for allegedly asked officials of the Agency to work to "help our candidates" across the country.
Thus, some aid was almost apoplectic Bush earlier this month when they spotted Gibbs and Obama political guru David Axelrod, with photos of a Situation Room meeting on Afghanistan's political.
"Oh, the screams and cries that would have happened if Karl Rove was sitting in the same few members high-level meeting where the strategy was hammered. People have just gone ballistic, "said Peter Feaver, a former associate White House for George Bush and Bill Clinton.
Also, in about nine months, Obama has already participated in more than two dozen events fundraising, while Bush has only six in his first year in office, according to a statement by Mark Knoller, CBS.
Gibbs has accused his opponent to do more to raise a similar amount of money, since the kind of soft-Bush did not have the money fundraising from the beginning have been banned. "... The President does not accept money from PACs or lobbyists and do not allow lobbyists to give fundraisers he has to, well," Gibbs said.
Dealing with business in secret
Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney has endured years of criticism and lawsuits that extended all the way to the Supreme Court during the secret meetings of Cheney's Energy Task Force held with oil companies and gas. When politics emerged, critics have said that Cheney was carrying water for industry.
Obama has promised to hash out a reform of health care live on C-SPAN and excoriated Bush for kowtowing to the pharmaceutical industry. But advisers have signed a rebate on the pharmaceutical industry to find 80 billion dollars in savings to support the reform. However, the wizards of Obama did not reveal that the agreement involved the White House, promising that the current health care legislation would not include additional cuts or to give the government the right to negotiate drug prices.
Mitigating Human Rights
During the campaign, Obama has talked tough measures in China. Although candidate Obama has pushed Bush to adopt a hard line, President Obama has not. Hoping to win support from China on Iran and North Korea, Obama skipped a meeting with the Dalai Lama spoke little and when China began a campaign of violent repression in the Xinjiang region largely Muslim. The White House has promised to meet with the Dalai Lama later.
And any candidate Obama has warned Bush against a "reckless and cynical initiative [that] would reward a regime in Khartoum which has a record of not being up to its commitments," the emissary of President Obama in Sudan Scott Gration, seemed to draw a similar incentive-driven approach.
"We must think of giving cookies," said Gration. "Children, the country - they react with gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, the agreements, speaking engagement." The White House moved away from the characterization Gration strategy, but has posted a strategy to engage with the Sudanese regime.
Traveling and recreating
In his campaign, and as president, Bush mocked a lack of interest in all things foreign - seven minutes touring the Kremlin, with 25 minutes to the Great Wall of China, before declaring: " Let's go home. "
During a trip to Europe in June, Obama has criticized the French and German journalists for suggesting that he was snubbing the country, making only brief stopovers in each. "There are only 24 hours in the day. And there is nothing anyone of this speculation beyond us, just trying to get into what we could do on such a short trip, he told the press in Germany.
But after taking his wife with attention-grabbing night so far, Obama stir quickly return to Washington. Approximately 90 minutes of arrival at the White House, the president was carefully planned to move again - headed to Andrews Air Force Base to play nine holes of golf.
