Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post sheds a little light on how Rahm F’n Emanuel leaned on network news executives to carry President Obama’s health care news conference. It’s the Chicago way.
In the days before President Obama’s last news conference, as the networks weighed whether to give up a chunk of their precious prime time, Rahm Emanuel went straight to the top.
Rather than calling ABC, the White House chief of staff phoned Bob Iger, chief executive of parent company Disney. Instead of contacting NBC, Emanuel went to Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric. He also spoke with Les Moonves, the chief executive of CBS Corp., the company spun off from Viacom.
Whether this amounted to undue pressure or plain old Chicago arm-twisting, Emanuel got results: the fourth hour of lucrative network time for his boss in six months. But network executives have been privately complaining to White House officials that they cannot afford to keep airing these sessions in the economic downturn.
The networks “absolutely” feel pressured, says Paul Friedman, CBS’s senior vice president: “It’s an enormous financial cost when the president replaces one of those prime-time hours. The news divisions also have mixed feelings about whether they are being used.”
Naw! You think!?
And no, this is not how the previous administration operated:
Tensions have been building behind the scenes. Some television executives say the Bush administration informally floated possible news conference dates in advance, while Obama officials basically notify the networks of their plans. Such an approach prompted calls between White House officials and the top executives at each network, and a meeting between Gibbs and the Washington bureau chiefs.
Had Obama not answered the last question that evening -- declaring that the Cambridge police had acted "stupidly" in arresting Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home -- the news conference would have been almost totally devoid of news. And that raises questions about whether the sessions have become mainly a vehicle for Obama to repeat familiar messages.
Mark Whitaker, NBC's Washington bureau chief, says Obama "is at risk of overexposure" and suggests the sessions are losing their novelty.
"Every time a president holds a press conference there is potential for news to be made, as he did, probably to his regret, with his comments on the Gates case," Whitaker says. Still, he says, "we would feel better" if White House officials "were approaching us with the sense that they had something new to say, rather than that they just wanted to continue a dialogue with the American people. There are other ways of continuing that dialogue than taking up an hour of prime time."
---SNIP---
Since the Reagan era, when cable news was in its infancy, prime-time presidential pressers have been a relative rarity. George H.W. Bush held one in 1992, but the broadcast networks dismissed it as an election-year event and refused to carry it. The following year, when Bill Clinton held his first evening news conference, CBS and ABC stiffed him; NBC carried the first half-hour; only CNN and PBS aired the whole thing. George W. Bush held four such events in eight years.
But the networks have deemed Obama a box-office draw, featuring him on everything from "60 Minutes" to "The Tonight Show" to a 90-minute ABC town meeting on health care.
---SNIP---
Dee Dee Myers, Clinton's first White House press secretary, says ABC and CBS rejected her first prime-time request in 1993 on grounds that the press conference was "not news."
"With Obama," she says, "everyone wants to have a relationship with the president because he's been good for ratings. I've been impressed by how easily they seem to be able to roadblock an hour. No other president in TV history would have been able to do it."
---SNIP---
One result: The audience is gradually dwindling. The last presser drew 24 million viewers, a significant number but a 50 percent decline from Obama's first such event in February.
Well, FDR has his "fireside chats."
And, further along in the Kurtz column:
Quote:
Listening in on a Peter Hart focus group, Slate's John Dickerson hears the following:
" 'We've found out he's not Superman,' said Obama voter Nora Seeley, 54, a dental hygienist, when asked what she had learned about him in the last six months. 'He's on a fast train,' said Seeley. 'Things aren't being considered.'
Nearly everyone echoed this sentiment. 'Slow down,' said Alex Chambers, a 27-year-old teacher, when asked to give the president advice. 'The speed that he's doing things -- it's a little bit of a gamble,' said Tim Polen, a 24-year-old student.
Many worried that by moving too quickly--particularly on health care -- Obama was going to make the situation worse....
---SNIP---
In National Review, Rich Lowry says Obama's problem is both speed and direction:
"Hubris made him reach for too much, too soon; brazenly overpromise about the effects of his program; overestimate his control of events; think the golden touch of his brilliant team could solve intractable problems; and believe his words could trump reality . . . What Obama needs is a little modesty . . .
"He could have taken steps to address the financial crisis -- basically continuing the Bush program, as he has -- and pursued a genuinely bipartisan stimulus . . .
"He could have followed up the stimulus with incremental health reforms -- say, new insurance regulation and subsidies for the uninsured -- in a continuation of the salami-slice approach to health care that has been so successful for Democrats. Again, he'd have gotten substantial Republican support. At the six-month mark, he'd have a few important, if not sweeping, legislative accomplishments; he'd have avoided all of the liabilities of his stimulus and health-care proposal; and he would have split the Republican party. He'd own the center."
Now, if we could only get the Japanese to sneak attack Pearl Harbor again, then we'd have a good crisis not to be wasted, and we'd get the entire country fully and completely united behind:
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Fight Organized Crime... next election, elect no one. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"It was often pointed out during the election that Obama lacked management experience. While having a president with no experience is bad, it's not nearly as bad as having a president with experience as a community organizer."
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"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm."
- James Madison, Federalist No. 10
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