The Watchdog with David Bozell

The closer Election Day gets, the more the media seem convinced Republicans winning would trigger the end of civilization as we know it.

That’s when the full election-season machinery kicks in.

Every alarm sounds. Every protective instinct takes over. Anything that might hurt Democrats or help Republicans gets softened, buried, or explained away.

NBC's recent interview with Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed offered a textbook example.

Just weeks before the midterms, a casual viewer might assume a network interview would focus on helping voters evaluate a Senate candidate.

Instead, Kristen Welker seemed more interested in protecting and promoting the candidate than examining him.

And she appeared eager to skip ahead several chapters.

The giveaway came when she asked: “Is America ready for a Muslim president?”

A Muslim president?

Michigan voters haven't even decided whether they want him in the Senate.

It's hard to imagine a Republican getting the same treatment. On the right, candidates get the boxing glove treatment. On the left, it's kid gloves all the way. One side gets cross-examined. The other gets introduced. Coronated. 

El-Sayed wasn't being presented primarily as a Senate candidate seeking votes. He was being presented as something larger: a national figure, a barrier-breaker, maybe even a presidential contender.

And the question itself is revealing. Why is it always America that needs examining? America that needs educating? America that needs to prove itself?

The candidate wasn't under scrutiny.

The country was.

The premise wasn't that El-Sayed needed to prove himself.

The premise was that America might need to prove itself worthy of him.

As I told Fox News: "NBC took one look at Abdul El-Sayed and started planning the presidential library. Never mind Hasan Piker. Never mind Michigan. Meet the Press skipped the vetting and went straight to measuring El-Sayed's Oval Office drapes."

Some politically inconvenient subjects didn’t make the final cut.

Perhaps they would have complicated the story NBC was trying to tell, or the candidate it seemed determined to introduce on the most flattering possible terms.

By election season, the pattern becomes familiar. Republican candidates get investigated. Democratic candidates get interpreted. One side faces the press corps. The other gets a human shield.

NBC gave El-Sayed the shield.

Take it easy,David Bozell
President