Look who was all over the front page of the Oct. 5 New York Times: none other than that master manipulator of the press, Iowa’s Representative Steve King. The Times reporter who selected King’s District to profile said he “picked the district because its representative in Congress”, Steve King, “has been one of the most outspoken advocates for blocking Obamacare.” Not, mind you, the most thoughtful, but most outspoken. King could also have been accurately described as reckless.
The Des Moines Register, which knows the Iowa flamethrower well, once editorially endorsed him in a race for the U.S. House. The paper soon regretted the choice and retracted the endorsement, calling King an embarrassment. House Speaker John Boehner has described King’s comments on illegal immigrants as both “hateful” and “ignorant.” King did, however, once find positive things to say about the late senator from Wisconsin, the disgraced Joseph McCarthy.
King has an insatiable—some might say pathological-- need for the limelight, and a knack for self-promotion. The front-page Times story featuring King said, “Representative King has really come to the fore in the current debate about paying for Obamacare and the government shutdown, emerging as a leader of a hard-core group of about two dozen Republican representatives in pursuit of the holy grail of the ‘end of Obamacare’ as Mr. King puts it. He has seemingly been everywhere in the media in recent days, which has fueled talk among some conservatives of a possible presidential run. Mr. King has made visits to New Hampshire and South Carolina, both early primary states.”
A columnist in King’s district has described him as a “master of finding or manufacturing controversy, issuing provocative statements, and reveling in the national media attention that follows.”
Nowhere in the 28 paragraphs devoted by the Times to King and his congressional district did the Times ever explain King’s credentials for speaking out on health care, perhaps because they are non-existent. Typically, King spots an issue currently in the news and sounds off on it in pungent prose, whether the issue is Benghazi or the Affordable Care Act. That guarantees him plenty of column inches and air time.
If Steve King becomes a presidential candidate, the press will have only itself to blame by giving him the attention he craves but in no way deserves.
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