Bad Staff Work Yields Embarrassing Story

At The Washington Post, Ed O'Keefe reports that President Obama accepted a transparency award -- at a meeting closed to the press.

“It’s almost a theater of the absurd to have an award on transparency that isn’t transparent,” said Gary Bass, founder of OMB Watch, and one of five transparency advocates who met with Obama on Monday. “The irony is that everything the president said was spot-on. I wish people had heard what he had to say.”

Bass was joined at the meeting by Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, Patrice McDermott of OpenTheGovernment.org and Lucy A. Dalglish of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Bass, Brian and Dalglish later blogged about the meeting.

All five groups have criticized the Obama White House and previous administrations for withholding government information or failing to disclose it in a timely manner. (Dalglish’s attendance at the private meeting may seem most questionable to the White House press corps, considering her group serves as a legal advocacy group for reporters and includes several prominent journalists on its steering committee.)

Bass insists the group didn’t realize the White House failed to disclose the meeting to reporters. “I think this is a particularly bad situation and I’m not going to try to defend the president on that,” he said.

Brian called it “crazy stupid” for the White House to keep mum about the meeting. “He even made a joke when we walked in the room about how he wanted to make sure we would be listed on the White House visitors logs,” she said in an e-mail. “Someone on the White House staff should get their butt kicked for this one.”

Presidential Communication

See the excerpt below from a New York Times story by Matt Bai. Agree or disagree?

It’s still the one night of the year when the American president can count on commanding the country’s attention in prime time, his best opportunity to pound home a message and push an agenda.

Yet there’s also something oddly retro about the State of the Union address that President Obama will deliver on Tuesday — something that belongs to the last century, like compact discs and appointment television. While the speech will give Mr. Obama an opportunity to extol his record on health care and financial regulation, it may also serve to remind us of how surprisingly little he has accomplished when it comes to bringing presidential communication into the broadband age.

That’s not to say the White House isn’t trying. In fact, the president distributed a video preview of his speech to supporters over the weekend. And Mr. Obama’s advisers have scheduled a series of interactive online events for the days after the speech, his second State of the Union, highlighted by a presidential interview with questioners on YouTube.

Answering questions online, however, really just amounts to the same kind of televised town hall that presidents have been doing since the dawn of the broadcast era, except that now you watch it on a different kind of screen. Like his predecessors, Mr. Obama interacts from time to time with a few highly motivated voters at such events, but he has yet to find a new way to make himself accessible or compelling to the wider electorate online.

The Importance of The Daily Show

If you are wondering why we are reading a book about fake news, consider this item from Politico:

Paging Jon Stewart: The White House needs your help.

Robert Gibbs, President Obama’s press secretary, told reporters on Tuesday that he hopes the Comedy Central host can persuade enough Republican senators to vote for a 9/11 health bill so it can head to the president’s desk.

“If there's the ability for that to sort of break through in our political environment, there's a good chance that he can help do that,” Gibbs said in his briefing. “I think he has put the awareness around this legislation. He's put that awareness into what you guys cover each day, and I think that's good. I hope he can convince two Republicans to support taking care of those that took care of so many on that awful day in our history.”

Stewart has dedicated lengthy segments on “The Daily Show” to the legislation that would help the first responders on Sept. 11.

Rahm Emmanuel does damage control

This weekend featured some interesting interaction between the White House and the media. The New York Times has pointed out that since Obama is out of the country, his aides are trying to influence the weekend news in his absence. At least one aide, Rahm Emmanuel, had to do some damage control after The New York Times ran an article yesterday (on the website), today (in the paper) expressing doubt as to whether Obama is willing to take strong stands on issues. On ABC's "This Week" George Stephanopoulos challenged Rahm Emmanuel to respond to the story. You can see his reaction here.

This is a good example of the back-and-forth that goes on between the media and the White House. Rahm has to do some damage control and try to prevent the NYT article from defining the frame through which the media analyzes Obama's first 100 days.

A little later on in Rahm's appearance on the show you can see him struggling to adhere to one of our mock press conference rules: do not embed the words of the question in your answer. You can see this especially well in his answer on bank nationalization (between 3-4 minutes before the end).

Life Imitates Class

Two back-to-back stories in the New York Times:

Iran

The Obama administration and its European allies are preparing proposals that would shift strategy toward Iran by dropping a longstanding American insistence that Tehran rapidly shut down nuclear facilities during the early phases of negotiations over its atomic program, according to officials involved in the discussions.

Cuba

In abandoning longstanding restrictions on the ability of Cuban-Americans to visit and send money to family members on the island, President Obama demonstrated Monday that he was willing to open the door toward greater engagement with Cuba
— but at this point, only a crack.

Brandi/Factchecking POTUS

Brandi Hoffine `06 in today's Politico Playbook (h/t Byron Koay):

DNC Deputy Press Secretary BRANDI HOFFINE is awarded the pre-dawn "Mike
Allen shift." So we say “auf Wiedersehen” to “The Daily Damien,” and “good morning, sunshine” to Brandi

Factcheck.org looks at POTUS's press conference and finds some problems.

Over Their Heads

Addressing that topic relevant to this week's discussion, Jonathan Martin of The Politico writes:

At a time when his Washington honeymoon is turning into a hazing, President Barack Obama and his team are launched on a strategy to sail above the traditional White House press corps by reaching out to liberal commentators, local reporters and ethnic media. ... The around-the-filter strategy began under Nixon, notes Martha Joynt Kumar, a Towson University political science professor and expert on presidential communications. “Nixon created the Office of Communications, and they would send out copies of the president’s speeches directly to various groups,” Kumar said, referring to what is now the media affairs office. The idea then, as now, was to reach certain groups directly and without the interpretation of an at times cynical Washington press corps

The Ed Schultz interview is at:
http://www.bigeddieradio.com/uploads/resources/45/ed-interviews-president-obama.mp3

Obama 2.0 and CMC `06

This story describes an episode of Obama 2.0 and quotes Brandi Hoffine `06:

A spokeswoman for Organizing for America, Brandi Hoffine, said Thursday that "hundreds of thousands" of Americans had signed the pledge online, and they expect more than 1,000 canvassing events in all 50 states this weekend. Some analysts and political experts believe Obama will be able to springboard from his campaign success, using online tools to keep backers connected and motivated, and that will put new pressure on Congress to enact the president's agenda on health care and energy. Votes on the budget are expected in the next two months. "The legislative branch is about to experience crowd-sourcing," said Morley Winograd, the co-author with Michael Hais of "Millennial Makeover." He was using a term for leveraging Web technologies to enable mass collaboration.

Obama's mark in history

NYT article, Making Obama's Marks, provides further background on Obama's logo including the intent of the design:


The White House guidelines for each logo were very clear. “It was explicitly stated that the ARRA logo not look ‘governmental,’ ” Juras said. “We were asked to create a ‘visible sign of progress’ in a contemporary way while referencing energy, education and health care.


“The sooner it becomes a historical artifact, the better.”

Obama's "Weekly Address"

February 21st, on Barack Obama's page titled "The Weekly Address: The Broadest Tax Cut Ever, Starting Today", Christopher Hass reports that Obama announced that employers will start to reduce taxes for 95% of working families. In this blog, there is a YouTube video of Obama talking about his plan. The style of this video is directly reminiscent of FDR's fireside chats where Obama talks directly into the camera. This is the first time that a president has talked to directly to the people over the internet through video. We've really come a long way!