Jake Tapper authors the latest episode of the investigative newsmagazine-meets-serial soap opera that is The Media and Obama: Totally in the Tank?. Obama, Tapper writes, before giving his Speech of Hope in the Symbolic Setting of a Unified Berlin, confided to reporters that he wasn’t sure how many people might, in the end, come out to see his speech in person. Tens of thousands (Obama’s conservative guess)? Some two hundred thousand (the final estimate)?
“We really have no idea what’s going to happen,” the candidate/potential president/Beacon of Hope and Light told reporters. “Sort of a crapshoot. I’m happy with the speech though.”
And then, per Tapper:
A reporter noted that the campaign has been distributing fliers to Berliners to drum up attendance.
“Why don’t you guys go out and distribute some fliers?” Obama asked. “Is that a conflict for you guys?”
Joked a cable news correspondent: “We have been. It’s called television.”
And…scene.
Megan Garber is an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. She was formerly a CJR staff writer.