Obama Holds His Ground

The President just interrupted a press briefing with Robert Gibbs to further discuss the controversy over Henry Louis Gates. And while he acknowledged that his language could have been different, he pointedly did not apologize or submit that he said anything wrong.

Obama said he spoke directly with Crowley today and has extended an invitation to meet with the officer.

However, the president did not back away from his other remarks on racial profiling in America. “The fact that it has garnered so much attention, I think, is testimony to the fact that these are issues that are still very sensitive here in America,” he said.

“I continue to believe that there was an overreaction in pulling Professor Gates out of his home to the station,” he said. “I also continue to believe, based on what I heard, that Professor Gates probably overreacted as well.”

“My sense is you’ve got two good people in a circumstance in which neither of them were able to resolve the incident in the way it should have been, or the way they would have liked it to be resolved,” the president said.

Obama further rejected the criticism that as president he should not have weighed in at all. “That I disagree with,” he said. “Race is still a troubling aspect of our society. Whether I were a black or a white, I think me commenting on this and hopefully contributing to constructive as opposed to negative understanding about the issue is part of my portfolio.”

The president expressed frustration that the controversy has distracted from the conversation he’d rather be having. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but nobody’s been paying much attention to health care,” he quipped.

Greg Sargent has more. Good for him. The press can attack him all they want, but he is standing up on a legitimate policy issue - racial profiling and police misconduct - which will resonate for a hell of a lot of people in this country. The media might go nuts, but Obama was right to say what he said, and he's right to defend it.

Next Time, Just Address The Nation

Obama's press conference last night began with a sharp, 9-minute speech to the nation about the need to fix health care now, and the principles for reform that he sees as essential to any bill. I thought he did a good job bringing it down to the level of the average American. The media didn't like it because he wasn't "excited" enough, at least in the words of Howard Fineman (who's he supposed to be, Terry McAuliffe?), because he didn't mention any particular health care horror story from individuals (except he did), because he didn't give details of his plan (um, they're working on it, and he described most of the options), and because he didn't make any news. Except until the end, when he answered a question about Henry Louis Gates truthfully, causing audible gasps among the white reporters assembled.

Betty Cracker sums it up:



I think the fact that the press didn't like his performance last night - and they're all theater critics anyway - gives me confidence that the public will. And apparently people cheered in Times Square at his comments about Professor Gates, so that wasn't a problem either.

Obama has a command of the facts of this debate, and an ability to explain it in lucid terms. But I think he has to bypass the media now. So far, Obama's public statements have come in prime time press conferences. He has not made an address from the Oval Office, nor has he given any topic the kind of seriousness and gravitas that goes along with it. Inserting the press into it adds a filter that makes them part of the story, and their questions necessarily drive the discussion. I think Obama would be better served just addressing the nation from time to time, in prime time and not in a YouTube address, to focus attention on where he wants it to be. There's a layer of distance that goes with that, so the media cannot get away with "he's tired" or some such catty comment. And Presidential addresses are memorable. They're powerful. They allow for direct communication.

If you have something to say in the future, just address the nation, Mr. President. I don't think I can handle another Chip Reid question, anyway.

...Jon Cohn gets at the problem - he talked to America like they were grown-ups. Reporters don't like that, I guess.

Liveblogging Obama's Speech On Health Care

They scheduled this at the last minute. Obviously negotiations are hitting a rough stretch, particularly over who will pay for health care. Let's see if the President draws any lines in the sand.

..."I realize that Washington is often focused on the 24-hour news cycle instead of the long view." He's going to put it in context, and try to discuss the progress made.

...talking about provider deals to reduce the cost of health care growth. The $80 billion dollars from drug companies, the hospitals deal. Endorsements from AARP, the American Nurses Association and the AMA.

..."consensus around specific reforms," need to invest in preventive medicine, streamline forms, reform insurance system so you can get affordable coverage if you're out of work, guaranteed issue, insurance exchange.

"Lower costs, more choices, and coverage you can count on." Not a bad bumper sticker.

This consensus has brought us closer to the goal than ever. Now we have to get over the finish line. Main stumbling block is how to pay for it (as I've said). Must be deficit-neutral. Cutting unnecessary spending and giveaways could make up 2/3 of the total costs. We have to find a way to pay for the remaining 1/3.

The bill will also include my commitment to slow the growth of health care costs in the long run. "bend the cost curve" Lot of debate and disagreement. Our proposal would change incentives to get the best care and not the most expensive care. Talking about the MedPAC reform. Independent group of doctors and experts to oversee best practices. They're calling it IMAC. "Force Congress" to act on recommendations to bend the cost curve each and every year. Independent group empowered to make these changes.

"The last miles of any race are the hardest to run." But now is not the time to slow down. If we don't reform, we cannot control costs and our long-term deficits. No one's insurance will be secure if we do nothing. "Not a future I accept for the United States of America." We are going to get this done. It will happen this year.

This is basically an overview, a full stop, saying "look where we've come, here's what we have left to go." Using the bully pulpit to lay this out.

Media Fine Whine

Nico Pitney has consistently provided the best coverage of any American journalist on the Iranian uprising. Better and more widespread than any major news organization, often based on primary sources, consistent, deep, and comprehensive. This is Huffington Post's finest hour, and they're not doing anything particularly revolutionary. They just set a reporter up with knowledge of social networking and liveblogging and put him to work. And he's performed brilliantly.

Today, he got to participate in the White House press conference, and before attending he solicited questions from Iranians on what to ask the President if he were called upon. The White House obviously noticed this, considering he's been the number one source for news and information about Iran, and wanted to reward him for his work as well as inject a different perspective into the questioning. So President Obama called on Pitney and was asked about what circumstances under which he would accept an Ahmadinejad victory, a difficult but necessary question to be asking a President who previously wanted to engage with the Islamic Republic.

“Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad, and if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn't that a betrayal of the — of what the demonstrators there are working towards?”

Out of this, the traditional media devises a conspiracy that Pitney is somehow the Jeff Gannon of the Obama Presidency, and that his question was chorepgraphed and therefore illegitimate. The White House quickly released a statement that they had contacted Pitney beforehand:

We did reach out to him prior to press conference to tell him that we had been paying attention to what he had been doing on Iran and there was a chance that he’d be called on. And, he ended up asking the toughest question that the President took on Iran. In the absence of an Iranian press corps in Washington, it was an innovative way to get a question directly from an Iranian.

That's the whole point that people like Michael Calderone don't want to face. Pitney asked the TOUGHEST possible question to the President about Iran. If the question was "coordinated," as Calderone darkly suggests, it would sound something like "isn't what you're doing on Iran completely awesome and shouldn't John McCain apologize to you?" Instead, Pitney offered a policy question, from an Iranian, that forced Obama to engage with his own rhetoric about justice and bearing witness to the events.

Notably, the last time a Huffington Post reporter got called on, putting the traditional media's panties in a bunch, San Stein ALSO asked a very tough question to Obama about establishing a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate the Bush torture regime. Maybe the press corps isn't pissed about the Huffington Post getting called on, they're pissed about those reporters schooling them at the only thing they do all day.

Marcy Wheeler notes:

As to Calderone's bitching, it's out of line for several reasons. First, if I knew that Nico was hoping to ask a question from an Iranian, then chances are the people paid to know these things at the White House knew. What better tribute to democracy and free speech could the White House make than to allow this question to be posed to the President?

And, after all, one primary focus of the presser was Iran. There are few who would argue that Nico's reporting--his tireless compilation of news coming in from both traditional and citizen media--hasn't been far and away the best minute-to-minute news on the Iranian crisis (to take nothing away from the people offering superb commentary and expertise, which I consider something different). Maybe the Politico's media reporter has missed it, but Nico's doing something pretty historic with his reporting on Iran. So even assuming the White House isn't as up-to-speed as I am, how hard do you think it would have been for them to guess that Nico, who has been living and breathing the Iranian crisis since it started, would ask a question about Iran?

I mean, c'mon. To try to turn this into a scandal is to assume that both the White House and Politico itself are a lot stupider than I think they are.

I don't think you can possibly assume that about Politico.

Obama Presser Thread

If something interesting comes along.

So far the opening remarks on Iran are pretty much the same as he said in his statement over the weekend. He's also pushing back on the Iranian government's claim that the US is meddling in their internal affairs... "no iron fist is willing to shut off the world from bearing witness." He actually referenced Neda. "Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history."

Now he's talking up Waxman-Markey, a little above what the bill actually does, frankly.

Health care "must and will be paid for," and "will bring down the crushing cost" of treatment. We must "preserve what is best about our health care system," but unless we fix what is broken, health care will become a burden to all of us. "Status quo is unsustainable and unacceptable"... that was a pretty generic statement on health care.

? on Iran: "We're still waiting to see how this plays out." I agree with Matt Yglesias that an Iran with this regime still in power will not be available for engagement, and Obama in his remarks seems to recognize that. The moderates who may have been able to push Supreme Leader Khamenei toward a greater engagement with the world are the ones bitterly opposing him on the streets. The hardliners have Khamenei's ear right now, and if the crackdown succeeds, they'll be the only ones left in the room. "How they handle the dissent within their own country will not only shape Iran's future but the relationship with other countries."

Obama SINGLES OUT Nico Pitney for a question, which Pitney solicited from Iranians earlier today. That's a fantastic moment for online journalism. Pitney asks under what conditions Obama will accept Ahmadinejad's victory. Obama acknowledges significant questions about the legitimacy of the election, but says that ultimately it's up to the Iranian people. "We can say unequivocally that there is a set of international norms and principles about violence and crushing dissent."

? about the systemic risk regulator in new financial regulation, and the role of the Fed. Obama says that the Fed performed better than other regulators, which I find dubious. He's on better ground talking about consumer protection and the CFPA (Consumer Financial Protection Agency), and here he admits that the Fed had responsibility over consumer protection. "We are not expanding the Fed's power but focusing on what the Fed needs to do." He wants to give the Fed resolution authority, such as what they could have had over AIG.

? by Major Garrett saying "what took you so long" to be appalled and outraged over Iranian repression. Typical neocon framing, and Obama doesn't accept it. He has to repeat this again, slowly, with smaller chunks of words... in a follow-up, he asks if Iranians are still allowed at July 4 celebrations, and he kind of dodges it.

? on the public option. Obama pivots to talk about health care reform more broadly. Cites the polls showing that 77% of Americans are satisfied with their health insurance, but that's going to end if we don't control costs. We cannot keep doing what we're doing. We have "a long-standing, critical problem with our health care system." It seems like he doesn't want to get into specifics. "Our top priority is to control costs." Talking about incentives and the delivery system, essentially the McAllen problem, which is something that the press has trouble reporting on. Obama says that he can't support a bill without significant cost control. He talks about how the bill has to be paid for, and can in part be done by shifting money already in the system. "I think it's also wise policy to start providing coverage for people who don't have health insurance or are underinsured... I get two or three letters a day" about health care horror stories.

"The public plan, I think, is an important tool to discipline insurance companies." He moves quickly into the health insurance exchange idea, which is also not discussed all that much, and which I'm planning a post about later. He's talking about a public option inside that exchange that makes sense. "Why would it drive private insurance out of business?" He really took on the faulty logic by insurance industries with that one. "Conceptually, the notion that all these insurance companies who say they're giving people the best possible deal, that they can't compete... that defies logic."

? from Chip Reid going right back to this nonsense Iran argument from the neocons. He's not saying ANYTHING DIFFERENT TODAY that he did over the weekend. Chuck Todd does the same thing. Come on, guys.

? from Jake Tapper, asking if the public plan is non-negotiable. Tapper tries to make this argument about how the public plan would just destroy insurers on cost. Obama isn't drawing lines in the sand on the public option, despite given every opportunity to do so. The current position is that the public plan makes sense. I wish Obama said that the whole POINT is to make insurers compete on cost. "I'd like insurers to take note" on reducing administrative costs, and I don't think anyone should object to that. He did a decent job with that in the final analysis, but he declined to take a stand.

Obama did something really well at the end there, saying that he took the advocates of the free market to heart. If they're so damn great at delivering services, and if the government is so bad at it, then they shouldn't have a problem.

? Wow, that was a sucky question from McClatchy there, basically pumping the President for information on his smoking habits. To his credit, Obama answered it.

? on the Chilean President coming to the White House. He's obviously been briefed on the Chilean situation, and gets a dig in about Bush wasting the surplus.

? on unemployment and the need for a second stimulus package. Obama says not yet. And says that nobody had a sense of what the recession would look like. "We missed the mark as to our estimates of where unemployment would go." He acknowledges that unemployment will go over 10%. Says that in the absence of the stimulus, the economy would have declined much more. This is true, but there's a problem with this that I'd like to get into in a later post. "I don't expect people to be satisfied" with the progress on the economy. That's an honest take, saying that it's a tough period. As an example, the mortgage program isn't working as well as it should. Wants to focus on the short-term pitfalls in the economy, and setting the foundation for long-term growth.

Two more questions...

? on African-American unemployment rate hitting 20% potentially. It's good to ask Obama about things like this, which he appears reluctant to address. He's trying to play the "rising tide lifts all boats" argument by saying that we have to recover the entire economy. In some inner-city communities, the jobless rate was sky-high even before the recession. So then he starts in about programs that can focus on the inner city and give them ladders to get into the job market. I'd love to hear Obama talk more about these kinds of programs.

? Suzanne Malveaux with the final question, asks about Neda. Obama's seen the video, calls it heartbreaking, and that it's fundamentally unjust. Malveaux asks about the quiet in the cities, and how the demonstrators may be paralyzed by fear. Obama expresses concerns about that. "We've all been struck by the courage of people.... the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."

Iraq Violence Is Rising

The President made one mistake last night, when he talked about violence still being below the levels of "a year ago." Actually, with yesterday's attacks killing 47 it has risen to that level.

BAGHDAD — April was the bloodiest month for violence in Baghdad in more than a year, another sign that Iraq's security gains are beginning to reverse.

President Barack Obama acknowledged Wednesday night that violence has risen in recent weeks, but he said the levels of violence were still below last year's.

Calling recent bombings "a legitimate cause for concern," Obama said "civilian deaths . . . remain very low compared to what was going on last year."

But statistics kept by McClatchy show that in Baghdad alone, more than 200 people have been killed in attacks so far this month, compared with 99 last month and 46 in February, according to a McClatchy count.

The last time McClatchy recorded more than 200 civilian deaths in one month in the capital was more than a year ago, in March 2008.

To maintain credibility in foreign policy, Presidents must talk straight with the American people. There's a reason for the rising violence, and that's the failure of the surge to effect a meaningful political reconciliation, which is leading to an increase in sectarian violence. Obama could make that case, and tweak his Iraq plans to increase the diplomatic efforts to force those political solutions. In fact, by dispatching Hillary Clinton to Iraq last week, he's doing that. But he shouldn't minimize the scope of the violence in Iraq right now. That's disingenuous and distorting.

Presser Thoughts

Watched Obama's presser. Man, he doesn't want to answer anything regarding what the Bush Administration committed regarding torture at all. He did eventually admit that waterboarding is torture, but Jake Tapper (decent job Jake) really had to pull it out of him. He said "Waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it's torture." He made a good series of statements of why we don't torture, invoking Churchill's treatment of German detainees during World War II, and without so many words, shot down Dick Cheney's insistence that cherry-picked documents prove the success of torture techniques, basically saying that he's seen nothing to disabuse him of the notion that torture makes us less safe. I think we'll eventually see those and other memos in the slow trickle of the fact pattern.

But the elocution was maddening. He admits waterboarding was torture, but answering a question of whether the Bush Administration's torture tactics violated international law, he called them a "mistake." As if it was an oversight, not necessary to prosecute.

Now, a President makes no decisions on whether or not to prosecute anyone, and he shouldn't prejudge any future cases by agreeing on what the Bush Administration did or didn't do. But these are key issues that are not getting answered, and a continued insistence that we look forward and not backward being pressed. He called torture a "shortcut," almost conceding the point that it works, but in totality said the country is made less safe. Clearly he's getting some information of some sort showing certain techniques being effective in some way, but it's all vague, and David Axelrod just followed up on Countdown by saying it's unclear which information came from which techniques. As you know, I think it's wrong to have this debate at all, and that such a debate debases us and violates our ideals and our values just as much. And we should stop talking about whether torture works, because in totality it doesn't, and start talking about why it has been prosecuted as torture for centuries. The cost-benefit analysis might be somehwat useful, but it doesn't make the needed argument about our essential debasement when we engage in such behavior.

And by the way, with no further actions on torture, we lose the argument with allies about our values and our commitment to the rule of law as much as we did by torturing in the first place. They'll go their own way.

Judge Baltasar Garzon will probe the "perpetrators, the instigators, the necessary collaborators and accomplices" to crimes of torture...

Garzon said that documents declassified by the US administration and carried by US media "have revealed what was previously a suspicion: the existence of an authorised and systematic programme of torture and mistreatment of persons deprived of their freedom" that flouts international conventions.

This points to "the possible existence of concerted actions by the US administration for the execution of a multitude of crimes of torture against persons deprived of their freedom in Guantanamo and other prisons including that of Bagram" in Afghanistan.

Michael Scherer of Time also put together a great question about the state secrets privilege, and got the President to state that the privilege is overly broad and ought to be narrowed. As for why Obama's lawyers in the Justice Department continue to use it, he claimed that they just got into office and had to come up with these briefs and haven't mastered the issue yet to the degree that they need to. I think that's a desperately bad answer. First of all, we're now talking three months. Second, shutting down lawsuits because you haven't had time to figure out the national security implications makes little sense, and the 9th Circuit Court agreed yesterday.

Overall, I think Obama is doing a great job with a bad hand, and has really moved the country forward in the first 100 days. On a few issues - Afghanistan, the banks, and this inability to break fully with the Bush Administration on the rule of law, or offer any accountability - we part ways. That's OK - it's my job to build a movement to push him in the right direction and criticize where necessary.

But what Obama has been missing has been an independent, obstreperous citizens' movement demanding fundamental reform. Roosevelt had the labor movement, the Townsend Clubs, Huey Long, socialists and communists challenging him from the left. Johnson had the civil rights movement forcing his hand.

This kind of opposition isn't easy. No president likes to face disruption, particularly from what he would consider his base. There are similar stories told about both Roosevelt and Johnson meeting with leaders of the movements and saying something to the effect of, "I agree with you, now go out there and make me do it." But in reality, Roosevelt wanted to squelch Long and tame labor. And Johnson repeatedly ordered Hubert Humphrey to bring the civil rights demonstrations to an end, saying that they weren't helping the cause. King got a lot of pressure —to say nothing of wiretaps and FBI investigations—to get back in step.

Yet it is precisely these movements—independent, disruptive, passionate, demanding bolder reform, taking on entrenched powerful interests—that enabled Roosevelt and Johnson to achieve far more than they ever thought possible. The New Deal we remember—Social Security, the Wagner Act, Fair Labor Standards, the SEC and Glass Stegall, progressive taxation—came not in the first 100 days, but as Roosevelt, under pressure from his left, geared up for re-election. The Voting Rights Act surely would not have been passed without Selma and many other sacrifices transforming public opinion to enable Johnson to act.

We have to be pests or we get what we deserve.

When The Press Corps Attacks

The White House Press Corps has had it. They're tired of the games, the evasions, the disrespect. They will boldly stand up for their profession and not hold back any more. Now the truth can be told. They will ask the penetrating, uncomfortable questions that no Press Secretary wants to hear.

They are going to finally call out the Administration for their lies in the run-up to Iraq!

No, scratch that, they're going to be pissy about Robert Gibbs walking in 20 minutes late to a briefing.

As the daily press briefing began this afternoon at 2:07pmET, several members of the White House press corps spoke up to press secretary Robert Gibbs about his tardiness.

FishbowlDC reports that the briefing began about 20 minutes after the two minute warning was given and that ABC's Jake Tapper "had taken charge with two visits to the Lower Press office to complain during the long wait."

By the time Gibbs arrived, members of the press corps could be heard complaining saying things like, "it irritates everybody here."

We hear the late briefings are a pattern, and that it was not an issue during the Bush administration.

On one level, reporters have deadlines, and this particular breed of reporters needs Gibbs to do their job. So fine. On another level, Gibbs was apparently late this time because he was talking to the President about an issue sure to come up in the briefing. Also, of all the things to finally blow their stack about, the press corps reaches their limit on punctuality? Lie to them, fine, just don't make them sit in an air-conditioned room for an extra five minutes. Show some respect for the office like George W. Bush did.

By the way, if Gibbs were prompt, maybe the press would have more time for scintillating, piercing questions like this.

MS. ROMANO: The teleprompter changed last night.

MR. GIBBS: Mm-hmm.

MS. ROMANO: What was that about that? It's a big jumbotron now.

MR. GIBBS: You know can I tell you this?

MS. ROMANO: Yes.

MR. GIBBS: I am absolutely amazed that anybody in America cares about who the President picks at a news conference or the mechanism by which he reads his prepared remarks. You know, I guess America is a wonderful country.

MS. ROMANO: You're saying this is all Washington Beltway stuff?

MR. GIBBS: I don't even know if it's that. I don't think I should implicate the many people that live in Washington.

MR. GIBBS: No, I you know, I don't think the President let me just say this: My historical research has demonstrated that the President is not the first to use prepared remarks nor the first to use a teleprompter.

I'm all for a vigorous press fighting for their rights to access, but when they continually take their cues from Matt Drudge headlines, isn't Gibbs' tardiness a virtue and not a vice?

The Famous Mr. Ed

Ed Henry has posted a breathless work of staggering back-patting about life inside the fast-paced world of asking pointless gotcha questions to the President, and how ya gotta think on your feet and make yourself as central to the story as possible:

At the first presser in February, I was about the 10th reporter the president called on. The economy had been chewed over so I went with a "sidebar" question about whether Obama, given his push for transparency, would overturn the policy at Dover Air Force Base preventing media coverage of coffins returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

It was a surprise line of inquiry. The president made news by saying the policy was under review -- and a few weeks later he overturned it.

I was heading into this event with the same strategy: make news on something unexpected (I won't tell you which topics I was working on cause it would ruin the surprise for a future presser or interview with the president).

Ezra has this right - Mr. Henry apparently got the impression from his journalism training that his role is to make news.

"Make news" is an interesting formulation for a reporter. I'm pretty sure the J School graduates are taught to "report" news, or maybe "explain" news. But creating news is rather a different goal. Inserting himself into the story, however, is well-aligned with Ed Henry's incentives. A lot more people know Ed Henry's name today than did a week ago. Henry can now write a column congratulating himself for standing tall in the face of the President's ire. It's similarly well-aligned with his industry's incentives. Though the American people might appreciate seeing the President offer a substantive explanation of his policy ideas -- 32 million of them, after all, watched the press conference for exactly that -- it's not the sort of thing that the cable channels can replay in bite-sized chunks. They're better off "making" a new news story that can lead tomorrow's Situation Room.

That's right. Journalism when caught up with commerce creates truly perverse incentives, where becoming the story is much more important than chasing the truth. Of course, the public has the choice of not participating in this by turning off their television every time Ed Henry is on. In a sense we get what we deserve, but in truth the alternative has not yet been tried.

Meanwhile, Henry's rant does have some value - it yielded this great parody about ed Henry visiting a Jack in the Box from Davenoon. Read in full.

Punch A Hippie Moment #2,938

So I was on NPR's Marketplace this morning, and when we taped the interview yesterday I was asked what kind of questions are likely to come from the online audience at the President's Open For Questions town hall. And immediately the question on the legalization of marijuana came to mind, and I thought "If I say this, the impression will be that everyone online is a pot-smoking dirty hippie," so I talked about bread-and-butter issues like health care and jobs, and then at the end I said "you'll see questions that are totally off limits to the traditional media, like the legalization of marijuana." It just slipped out.

Of course, that's what NPR used.

And the question was indeed asked at Obama's online town hall, and while I didn't see it, the President apparently snickered, along with his snickering staff, made a crack like "This is a very popular question to you online folks," and then categorically said no, that it wouldn't grow the economy, and moved on. Thus insulting the audience about their very popular question and giving it little respect. Here's how the liveblog at TechPresident discussed it, and I basically agree:

12:10
[Comment From Karen]
Not sure making fun of the "online audience" for asking is the best way to have handled that.

12:11
[Comment From Josh]
Probably not, he turned the question into a joke

12:11
[Comment From Andy]
Only good way to deal with it if you don't want to deal with it.

12:11
[Comment From Gene]
Is that going to feed the trolls or placate them

12:11
Matthew Burton: Too bad that he laughed off the most popular topic

12:11
[Comment From Josh]
feeds the trolls

12:11
Matthew Burton: Josh is right. There will be blowback from this.

12:12
[Comment From Karen]
Now how many million people feel that they weren't taken seriously? Frustrating. At least the room approved.

12:13
[Comment From Gene]
Blowback from a relevant segment of the audience?

12:13
Matthew Burton: He made it even more likely that the most popular questions in future town halls will be about marijuana

12:13
[Comment From Josh]
The fact that he made light of one of the most popular questions being asked does not say a whole lot for mr. obama

12:13
Joan McCarter: It was a simplistic response on the pot question, particularly in light of the border violence that Napolitano talked about yesterday. There's a connection he could have drawn to give a serious answer.

There are two issues here. First, legalization actually does deserve a serious response. You don't have to agree with it - I'm not certain that I do - but you ought to engage with it. The war on drugs has utterly failed, so it's not like the status quo is any less silly. But the second issue is even more damaging. Obama's Administration wants to bypass the media filter and open the tools of communication to a much larger community. And then a non-Village approved question gets asked and he snickers about it? For a real community interaction to work there has to be a certain level of respect, and that was apparently sorely lacking.

Then again, the only caucus Obama has not met with on Capitol Hill is the Progressive Caucus, so this is not surprising. In Washington, every day is Punch a Hippie Day.

Here We Are Now, Entertain Us

Jamison Foser and Eric Boehlert are hammering the press for their lazy, idiotic reporting on Barack Obama's press conference last night. Apparently the new meme is that the President was "boring" last night. I mean, he didn't juggle flaming bowling pins or play the spoons ONCE! How dare he ruin the evenings of the White House press corps with all that talk of "issues" and deficits in the out years. Foser and Boehlert are right, this is journalism as theater criticism.

And their biggest complaint is that they weren't chosen for the pick-up game and had to sit on the bench with all the losers.

In one Baker-Nagourney sentence, even a compliment is only a prologue to a dig that, come to think of it, might help explain why they're so petulant:

"He showed his usual comfort with a wide array of subjects, even as he excluded the nation's big newspapers from the questioning in favor of a more eclectic mix."

My italics but their pique. Take that, Barack Obama, you pompous pedagogue, stringing together whole sentences and indeed paragraphs as if Americans were entitled to hear a line of reasoning. Take that if you dare to exclude "the nation's big newspapers" even as they prove less big every day.

Contrast, for a moment, NYT coverage of George W. Bush's first press conference, on Feb. 22, 2001, a month into his first term. Bush, wrote Frank Bruni in the operative clause of his lede, "sought to redirect public attention to, and amass public support for, his proposed $1.6 trillion tax cut."

That is, Bush had a political goal and pursued it. He was purposeful. His style of pursuing it wasn't Bruni's prime subject. The fact that some of his statements made no sense, or worse, was not worthy of notice.

If you wonder why America seems grounded, unable to move forward on bold initiatives for the past 30 years, without the vitality or innovativeness necessary to tackle major challenges, look no further than this petulant, spoiled, anti-intellectual group of children that represent the modern Fourth Estate, who think that politics exists for their personal amusement. Serious times call for... well, anyone but these people. Here's the close to one of Foser's posts today, and you can substitute "Mr. Malcolm" with just about anyone else in the traditional media:

So here's a suggestion, Mr. Malcolm: Quit. Do it now. Hand in your press pass. There are plenty of out-of-work and soon-to-be-out-of-work-reporters who actually give a damn and who won't have any trouble staying awake for a presidential press conference and who are capable of producing a substantive article that will actually help readers understand what is happening in the world, instead of simply whining that they are insufficiently stimulated. Let one of them have your job. Take up skydiving or running with the bulls or whatever it takes to get you sufficiently excited, and let serious people do your serious job.

Out-Chuck Todd Chuck Todd

We have a pretty terrible media. The press conference featured question after question of irrelevant, puerile, ill-formed half-thoughts that was about as depressing as reading a Twitter feed. President Obama was game, but I think he might want to ditch the news conference part and just go Perot, whipping out charts and graphs and delving deep into explanations of what the country faces and what we need to move forward. The media filter just stifles thought.

That said, perhaps opening the Q&A process up to adults - namely the general public - can yield better results.

Today, the President invited everyone to use a new feature on WhiteHouse.gov called "Open for Questions" to ask a question about the economy and rate other questions up or down. Then, on Thursday morning, the President will conduct a special online town hall on the economy and answer some of the most popular questions and the event will be streamed on WhiteHouse.gov.

"Open for Questions" is a new experiment for WhiteHouse.gov, the President’s latest effort to open up the White House and give Americans from around the country a direct line to the Administration.

This first round will deal with a chief concern for all of us: the economy. We’ve created a few categories to better organize the questions, and encourage you to search for a specific question before you submit your own in case it already exists.

To get started, head over to http://WhiteHouse.gov/OpenForQuestions and set up your account. Then follow the simple instructions to start voting on questions or submit your own (we encourage you to include a link to a published video of the question being asked, although this is not required).

If this means I never have to listen to Ed Henry or Chip Reid or Major Garrett again, then thank you, White House. I'm sure you can think of a few good questions for the President, so have at it.

I'm Smart! Not Like Everybody Says! Like Dumb, I'm Smart!

I am sad I missed Roland Burris' press conference:

Roland Burris is on TV giving a speech defending himself against allegations he lied about his role in being solicited and then trying to help raise money for Rod Blagojevich to help get the senate seat. And it's basically identical to a series of speeches Blago himself gave when he was swirling around the bowl: How dare you give me any crap for lying about that fundraising stuff when, my god, I just helped pass the Stimulus Bill, SCHIP and the Lily Ledbetter bill.

A-Rod's presser was less excruciating. Where do they get these guys in Illinois?

It was obvious from the moment anyone accepted an offer from Rod Blagojevich to be appointed that they had only a passing familiarity with ethics and standards. And now it looks like the dam is going to burst. The Senate Ethics Committee is opening a probe into Burris' possible perjury, and Illinois Rep. Phil Hare is calling for resignation:

“Senator Burris’ story has now evolved several times since he testified before the Illinois House Impeachment Committee in December. The only logical conclusion is that he is not being entirely straight with the people of Illinois.

“A cloud of corruption has hung over our state and its leaders for too long. The impeachment and removal of former Governor Blagojevich was a step in the right direction. But just as it looked like a new era in Illinois politics was possible, we suffer yet another setback. It is like a recurring nightmare.

“Given this latest revelation, I believe it is in the best interest of all Illinoisans that Senator Burris resigns. Our state and its citizens deserve the whole truth, not bits and pieces only when it is convenient.”

Citizens also deserve to have a full say in who is their representative in Washington. If Burris doesn't survive and removes himself from the Senate, there ought to be a special election. The new Governor can ask the legislature to approve one. This only highlights how broken the appointment process is for vacancies. It's not the exception, it's the rule.

Protecting Their Turf

Vice President Biden's chief economist Jared Bernstein held a blogger conference call today (my invite must have gotten lost in the mail, sniff), where he talked pretty frankly about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's final version that should see passage this week. Bernstein called the bill a "down payment" and that the health care and energy sections need to be "deepened" in the future. “My view is no windows are closed when it comes to these good ideas,” he said. They're hoping that the bill reduces unemployment by two percentage points in the next two years, but they still expect the jobless number to be hovering around 8%, or higher than it is even today, by the end of 2010.

Bernstein also explained that the stimulus and a recovery in the banking system have to work in tandem to move money through the economy. That's the only way you can get multipliers out of the stimulus spending.

You want the money to circulate smoothly and efficiently from those who have it to those who need it. That doesn’t mean everyone needs to spend the money instantly. But it means that when people want to park their money, those funds should come available to other people who have good business opportunities that could be exploited with the assistance of a little credit. That’s where a healthy financial system comes in.

You may have heard tales from Japan’s “lost decade” in which stimulus measures failed to actually get the economy moving. Part of the problem was somewhat ill-conceived and ill-executed stimulus. But perhaps a bigger issue is that the didn’t actually clean up their banking system. Instead, they put it on life support. And then they used fiscal stimulus to put employment on life support. But we don’t want life support, we want stimulus that actually brings us back to life.

This is all good stuff, and it's great to have an economist from the Administration who was in the room on some of these deals engaging directly with progressive bloggers. This is the kind of access that the traditional media gets quite often, and yet they seem to squander it on tangential issues and optics and horse-race nonsense. I think it's very telling that, at this time of economic crisis (including in the journalism industry) a main concern of some members of the White House press corps is that a blogger from the Huffington Post got to ask the President a question at his first press conference. They are literally steamed about this.

Mara Liasson, National political correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR) and long-time contributor to Fox News, appears to be fuming after President Obama called on Huffington Post blogger Sam Stein during yesterday’s news conference. (It’s said to be the first time a president has acknowledged a blogger during a White House press conference, so the moment generated a bit of press chatter.)

Just over an hour ago, Ana Marie Cox (formerly Wonkette, now frequenting MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow) reported in on Twitter:

Mara Liasson next to me; on the phone; just said "He called on Huffington Post! I was surprised he didn’t call on Air America!" Oh honey.

As Chris Bowers notes, there is a reason why this has drawn so much attention, and that's simple jealousy, and a feeling of being threatened by new media. But it's not like White House access by HuffPo or blogs has detracted from access by the traditional media. They still have far more resources and access, and yet they use it to the most insipid ends possible. Bowers continues that there's another element to this.

Since you can't stop the rise of the new medium, the only available tactics left are to discredit the emerging new outlets within the new medium that operates independently of your control (portray independent new media operators as rabid, inexperienced, uninformed, arrogant, newcomers) while simultaneously working to co-opt their tactics within that new medium (hire a bunch of rabid, inexperienced, uninformed, arrogant, newcomers to produce content for your outlet). So, for example, you attack the credibility of the largest independent new media political website, the Huffington Post, write diatribes about other large blogs such as Daily Kos, and pass Congressional resolutions chastising the largest online political organization, MoveOn.org, while simultanesouly hiring bloggers to produce content for your show, inviting them as guests on your programs, and trying to start email based activist organizations of your own.

All of this is done not because new media itself is despised, but because new media has allowed alternative power centers on the left-wing of the Democratic / progressive coalition to rise as challenges to established, and largely corporate, dominance. No one in the political and media establishment would attack the Huffington Post, Daily Kos, or Moveon.org if they were operating as supportive adjuncts to, say, the Blue Dog coalition. The reason they are viewed as dangerous and worthy of attack is because of the political views they espouse, not just because they are new media.

It's an interesting thesis. Certainly there is a marginalization that goes on that makes individuals in traditional media happy, but also serves their corporate conglomerates' ends. Where they don't have the expertise, knowledge or even access, all they have left is perceived authority. And when that goes away, what are they left with? Shrinking audience share.

(Of course, they do have resources, and we need a vibrant and robust media in this country because I can't visit Afghanistan in my spare time. But the chattering class is really threatened. Which is why they are the most vicious.)

Game Of Chicken

I'm at work missing Obama's press conference, but it sounds to me like the AP reporter misread this answer:

Yet, he also acknowledged that some components of the bill would not create jobs, as GOP critics have complained. While such spending plans might be worthy, he said, "those programs should be out of this."

Considering that earlier in the day he said that cuts to education funding should be restored in the bill, I'd be surprised if this wasn't a reference to non-stimulative tax cuts like the AMT patch and the home-buyers credit. Looking at Ambinder's live-blog, he actually may have been conceding a point there, but he also talked about his upset at some of the cuts for school construction.

Over the past couple days Obama and his team have certainly hinted that they would be looking to alter things in conference on that part of the bill. But here's Arlen Specter's grim warning:

"My support for the Conference Report on the stimulus package will require that the Senate compromise bill come back virtually intact including, but not limited to, overall spending, the current ratio of tax cuts to spending, and the $110 billion in cuts."

In other words, accept the Senate version or we'll sink the economy.

Honestly, I'd like to see him try. He'd be a dead man walking for 2010, and he probably wouldn't be allowed to set foot in Pennsylvania for about a year. Specter always makes ultimatums like this before caving, by the way. He was the guy who shrieked on the Senate floor that habeas corpus was a thousand-year bedrock of common law, before voting to gut it. I'd say his ultimatum can be read as a sign of weakness.

Keep the pressure on. Make them torpedo this.

...This is very, very good stuff.



He can back up the rhetoric by demanding a bill that can actually work and reinforce his argument.

Out Of His Mind

Earlier today I speculated that the Senate might use the incidence of Rod Blagojevich's impeachment to stiffen their spines on the seating of Roland Burris. That's sure what it looks like:

No one can occupy the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama until the governor of Illinois is removed and a new appointment can be certified, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said Friday.

Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, was reacting to the Illinois Supreme Court's ruling denying a motion by Roland Burris that the state's secretary of state certify his appointment to the seat.

They're really sticking to the whole "the Secretary of State didn't sign the piece of paper and we can't go against tradition argument, even though the IL Supreme Court basically called it ridiculous today. But what's unsaid here is that Blago was impeached, and the Senate trial will probably be expedited, and I wouldn't be surprised if he was out on his ass in a couple of weeks. Not to mention the fact that he's being publicly insane and further tainting the appointment by making everyone aware of it.

Okay, fine, Blagojevich is clearly insane. I'm sitting here at my desk, listening to him chatter on in the background about the impeachment vote. And he's going on about how his policies let someone get a liver transplant, and should he really be impeached for that? It's like some bizarre performance art. Now he's quoting Tennyson.

No, really.



As Blagojevich swirls the bowl, Burris' hopes of getting seated do as well. Somehow, I have a sneaking suspicion that Lt. Gov. Quinn will appoint Burris, the Secretary of State will sign the order and everything will be fine.

Obama's Presser

It was distinguished, it was Presidential, it was deferential, it was occasionally charming (the puppy stuff was cute). It even broke a little news, as Barack Obama sought to lay out his economic priorities early in his first term. Even the one slip-up, mentioning Nancy Reagan's séances, was defused with aplomb. It was a solid first press conference.

The reason to move cautiously and deliberately is that George Bush has 75 days to go, and the financial world changed plenty in these past 75 days. We don't really know where we'll be on January 20. But foregrounding public works, extension of unemployment insurance and food stamps, and aid for state and local governments as part of a second stimulus is pretty encouraging, because that's what's needed. I think there is a growing consensus around these items, and if the current White House occupant won't move in that direction, the new one will. Of course, 75 days is a long time, perhaps too long to wait.

On a slightly different note, I think Gallup needs to take a deep breath and not run a daily tracking poll on Obama's favorability rating before he even gets in the Oval Office. The election is over. The polls can wind down as well.