ABSTRACT
The greatest barrier to Barack Obama's presidential campaign has been the attacks on his qualifications by the press. Over and over again, the media damned Obama as inexperienced. Throughout the media coverage of Obama, his name became synonymous with 'inexperienced'. Lynn Sweet in the Chicago Sun-Times cited 'the weakness on his resume his lack of experience'. On the website Huffington Post, Brent Budowsky, a former Democratic legislative staffer, denounced Obama's experience in harsh terms: Senator Obama has close to zero national security experience, close to zero national defense and foreign policy experience, close to zero national political experience, close to zero national legislative experience and close to zero experience being tested in the crucible of brutal national politics. The treatment of Obama's experience by the press stands in sharp contrast to how Hillary Clinton was regarded. The Associated Press even devoted an entire story to Obama 'tackling questions about his experience'.
