Now, I'm not always a huge fan of the White House press corps, to be sure, but must the president make excuses for himself by making things up about them? At the end of Obama's jobs summit Thursday, Barack Obama put the press corps on the long list of adversaries who are standing in the way of the awesomely awesome success of his policies. As Time writer Michael Scherer noted, "Obama effectively painted the press as an obstacle to not just the much-needed economic recovery, but to America recovering its 20th Century position as an economic powerhouse." Scherer notes a reply to Farooq Kathwari, CEO of Ethan Allen, who noted to Obama that layoffs he'd made had allowed the company to reinvent itself as something better. Obama seemed to agree with Kathwari's point, saying we need to "recapture" the sense that "America is not great because it's owed to us, but we've been great because previous generations have put in the hard work to get us there." I sure wish Karthwari had been around to inspire in Obama this love of creative destruction before we had given more than $60 billion to failing car companies, but I digress. Here was the second part of Obama's answer:
But it's not going to come easily and it is going to require a level of cooperation and a willingness to work strategically together that we have not seen over the last several years. And frankly, this town and the way the political dialogue is structured right now is not conducive to what we need to do to be globally competitive. And all of you are leaders in your communities -- in the business sector and the labor sector, in academia, we even have a few pundits here -- it is important to understand what's at stake and that we can't keep on playing games. I mentioned that I was in Asia on this trip thinking about the economy, when I sat down for a round of interviews. Not one of them asked me about Asia. Not one of them asked me about the economy. I was asked several times about had I read Sarah Palin's book. (Laughter.) True. But it's an indication of how our political debate doesn't match up with what we need to do and where we need to go.
In Obama's lexicon, "true" apparently has the same connotations as the word "clear"- that is, the exact opposite of the meaning of the word. As Twitter friend MayBeeTweet pointed out to Scherer, Major Garret asked the president about Obama's jobs summit and a South Korean trade agreement, and the stimulus' job creation numbers. Chuck Todd asked about the jobs summit and Chinese human rights. Ed Henry of CNN mentioned Chinese unwillingness to help with Iran and offered a viewer-submitted question on the economy. Obama doesn't have a whole lot to complain about when it comes to press treatment, and even if he did, unfairly impugning the efforts of three network White House correspondents would not be the way to go about correcting that treatment. But clearly the adversarial approach is one approved throughout the White House. Take for instance, this exchange from Friday, between White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and American Urban Radio's April Ryan. When Ryan asks about the possibility of White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers ruffling Michelle Obama's feathers by playing "belle of the ball" at the state dinner, Gibbs responds by admonishing the grown woman like a child- his own child, actually:
Frustrated by Ryan's tabloid-y line of questioning, Gibbs instructed her to "calm down" and to take a deep breath," adding "I do this with my son and that's what happens."
What's the best way to turn a somewhat frivolous, tabloid-style question into a story? Instead of calmly deflecting or answering, how about treating the reporter so condescendingly as to warrant almost three million YouTube views? Heckuva job, Gibbsy!
Update: Jim Geraghty says, "Remember in 2007 and 2008, when all of Obama's fans kept telling us about how great and cool and calm Obama's temperament was? And how tough he was, and how under no circumstances would he turn into an insufferable self-pitying whiner eleven months into the job?"