Despite Russia and Crimea being one of the biggest stories for the past few weeks, the conservative media is better off cutting its losses at this point and focusing more on domestic coverage.

With Vladimir Putin’s Russia still occupying Ukraine and having recently annexed Crimea after its citizens voted to leave Ukraine, some of the tension is finally fading. Conservative outlets have been saying President Barack Obama has been too cautious, and Putin has simply done what he wants without fear. Popular pundits like Bill O’Reilly and some commentators like Rudy Giuliani are saying that Putin can accomplish whatever he wants and is using this contrast to drive home how weak Obama is.

This could be genuine criticism, but the problem is the focus has mainly just been on the countless, simple comparisons of how weak Obama looks next to Putin. For example, on a Sept. 13 episode of Fox News’ “The Five,” Eric Bolling praised Putin walking around shirtless and bashing Obama for wearing “mom jeans.” Similar comparisons like this have been fairly common. These silly talking points shouldn’t be put in such a serious context, as they only give liberals more fodder to make fun of.

The conservative media has also frequently said Obama is too much like a “dictator,” but with all these contrasts of how much better a leader Putin is than Obama, it’s implying that Obama should be more like Putin to be a better leader. This doesn’t work out well, though, since Putin is much more of an actual dictator than Obama, locking up dissenting groups like Pussy Riot. If Fox News really wanted Obama to be more like Putin, he’d send the military forces to shut down their headquarters, which I doubt is what they want.

There’s also not much to gain from criticizing Obama’s actual handling of the issue. Even if Obama’s options were either sending troops to Ukraine with a cautious or assertive approach, neither one would have a good result.

First of all, Obama would never even consider sending serious military forces to Ukraine. This would be a major risk of starting a world conflict, bringing in NATO allies or some of Russia’s friends in Iran and Syria into the mix. A Democratic president who successfully ended the Iraq War and generally prefers sanctions to force, this would never accept this solution.

A softer approach to handling Russia wouldn’t work either. Just look back to how President George W. Bush handled the Georgia conflict in 2008, when several separatist regions in Georgia were looking to become sovereign and possibly join with Russia. The soft approach loaded with humanitarian aid didn’t do much to scare Putin then, and it won’t now.

On all fronts, criticism from major conservative media outlets couldn’t have led anywhere useful. If they have any hopes of being taken seriously, this wasn’t the right path.

There are plenty more realistic issues to criticize the president about. For example, the Affordable Care Act still doesn’t have enough young enrollees so close to the final deadline, and the administration has said if it doesn’t reach the 7 million enrollee target, premiums will be going up. Or they could point out that having so much of the health care costs relying on young people, struggling enough in today’s economy, is bad enough on its own. Or how Republican David Jolly won the Florida special election against major odds by focusing on attacking the law’s flaws, which shows what a major threat the ACA will be to Senate Democrats in the midterms this year.

The Ukraine crisis with Russia was a major distraction for conservative outlets that kept them from being an effective opposition to the president. Instead, they wound up focusing on a story with no serious potential outside of straight reporting. There wasn’t much to be gained by comparing both sides of the aisle. While there’s plenty of news like that out there, it wasn’t, and still isn’t, in Ukraine.

Max Antonucci is a junior newspaper and online journalism major. His column appears weekly. You can find him on Twitter @DigitalMaxToday or email him at meantonu@syr.edu.

Published on March 24, 2014 at 12:18 am