JFK also had problems with the media

President Obama and all his predecessors have at least one thing in common: Distrust of the media.

Even President John F. Kennedy, a recipient of favorable news coverage in the eyes of many analysts, had gripes with reporters, editors, and publishers.

"He both assisted and resented the press corps as they dogged his every footstep," wrote long-time aide and speechwriter Theodore Sorensen in his biography Kennedy. "He had an inexhaustible capacity to take displeasure from what he read ... and an equally inexhaustible capacity to keep on reading more than anyone else in Washington."

Mike Allen, author of the Politico Playbook, re-printed other Sorensen writings on Kennedy and the media.

They sound awfully familiar:

"He [Kennedy] regarded [journalists] as his natural friends and newspapers as his natural enemies. He was more concerned about a news column read by thousands than a newscast viewed by millions. …

"He always expected certain writers and publications to be inconsistent and inaccurate, but was always indignant when they were. …

"He had an abhorrence of public relations gimmicks, but was always acutely aware of what impression he was making. …

"[H]e worried more about [New York Times] editorials than those of a dozen [other] newspapers combined. But he could not understand how its editors could agree with 90 percent of his program and still write what at times seemed to him 90 percent unfavorable editorials.

"'I'm convinced,' he said after calling me early one morning about a particularly snide piece, 'that they keep in stock a canned editorial on our 'lack of leadership' and run it every few weeks with little change.'"