White House Directs Agencies To Plan for Spending Halts and Possible Cuts Ahead of Midterm Elections
Quotes of the Day: 'There is precisely one superstar in the Republican Party'
“I’m absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice. The American people insist on it. My administration will insist on it.†-- President Obama, on the news that the 9-11 mastermind and...
Anita Dunn: 'Going rogue' not her way
by Mark Silva
Was Anita Dunn, the outgoing communications director of the White House, speaking for herself when she called FOX News "an arm of the Republican Party'' on a rival cable news network's program, or was this something that Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and political adviser David Axelrod had planned ahead of time?
"I am not exactly one known for 'going rogue,''' Dunn said today, with an allusion to the well-known Republican, Sarah Palin, whose campaign had accused her of going off-script.
"The reality is that the media environment has changed so dramatically over the last decade, that what we think of as traditionally news sources, has changed,'' Dunn said, pointing to Comedy Central this week calling out FOX's Sean Hannity for mixing video of one well-attended protest rally with video of another less-attended rally ("We screwed up,'' Hannity acknowledged on his own program this week.)
"The people who did the fact checking on this, the people who exposed this, Jon Stewart on Comedy Central... well, that's where you're getting fact checking and investigative journalism these days, folks'' Dunn told an audience at Bloomberg's Washington Summit this afternoon, and so the White House too is watching when news is skewed. "For mainstream journalists, it is important for them to know that we are following those stories... that really don't live up to the scrutiny that you would bring to them.''
Okay then, was the president aware that Dunn was going to say what she said of FOX in that appearance on CNN, where she also suggested that FOX is not a news network in the traditional sense?
"I am not a person who is known for going rogue,'' Dunn said carefully, "but we also don't discuss personal decisions.''
This drew a knowing laugh from an audience here at the Newseum, where interviewer Al Hunt of Bloomberg News also asked Dunn what she thinks of MSNBC. The morning host, she noted, is a Republican from the "Gingrich Revolution'' (that's former Rep. Joe Scarborough of Pensacola), and they have a lot of commentary. "I do regard them differently as a network,'' she said.
Dunn herself also has come under the scrutiny of FOX's Glenn Beck, who had some fun playing the video of a speech she gave in which she cited her two favorite political philosophers, Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa. Dunn, who campaigned for Barack Obama for president, and fomer Sen. Bill Bradley before that, stepped in as White House communications director on an interim basis earlier this year, and is leaving on Dec. 1though says she will continue to serve as a consultant. Her husband, Bob Bauer, will become White House Counsel by year's end.
Is Obama disappointed on not having changed 'the tone'' in Washington that he hoped to change, Hunt asked? "I think he would have loved to be able to change more of the tone,'' Dunn said. "At the end of the day there is only so much he can do.''
Is there one big communication success she can cite?
"I think that the successful communications triumph is probably, it always starts with the president, and his speech to a joint session of Congress,'' Dunn said. "Which really did redefine the issue, which really did give momentum to what you're seeing today.... We have a president who writes most of his best speeches and really delivers them well.''
One big communications disappointment?
"I wish that we had earlier put more attention and resources into building our online community in the White House, which is something we did successfully during the campaign,'' Dunn said. "I think, in keeping with the president's real commitment to transparency, but also in bringing more people into the process, there is more we can do..''
Asked about Republican strategist Karl Rove's comment that the Obama White House is uncompromising and running roughshod over critics with a Chicago-brand of politics:
"Well, gee, Karl... At times like this, as the mother of a boy who only recently hit his teen years, I am always inclined to fall back on something like, 'I'm rubber, you're glue.'... .You see a president who has really gone to extraordinary lengths to reach out with people who don't agree with him.
"The reality is that, for the first time in history -- and this is a bell that can't be un0rung after we leave -- every visitor to the White House is going to be made public,'' she said of the Obama administration's decision to publish quarterly the list of everyone who visits the White Housea visitors log that the Bush White House fought to keep secret. "We are running this transparent and accountable administration that basically reaches out to people who agree and disagree with us... That was not the case when Karl Rove was calling the shots in the last eight years,''
Are the public opinion polls "heading South'' a measure of a problem of policy or communication, Hunt asked Dunn.
"This is my third go-'round with this,'' she said, having worked with Sen. Bradley on the issue and then during the New Jersey Democrat's bid for his party's 2000 presidential nomination. "There is a reason that people have not been able to do this. It is complex.... It is the communications challenge of all time... but when it passes, and when it becomes law, people will feel that real change has come to Washington.''
On Afghanistan, would it have been better for the administration to have moved more swiftly on a new deployment?
"I think the American feel we want to put a process in place, to ask questions before we put troops in,'' she said. "This is the toughest and most serious decision that any president faces, committing American troops... and taking the time to do it properly, to make sure you have asked all the questions and challenged all the assumptions... that is something the American people appreciate.
Dunn, one of the higher-level women to work in the Obama White House, also was asked here about those all-male basketball games that the president plays.
"I don't want to play basketball with the president,'' Dunn told Hunt. "We work really long hours. We want to go home.''
Obama's Half-Brother Recasts Story Of Their Father
One person who plans to meet with President Obama during his trip to China is his half-brother, Mark Obama Ndesandjo, who lives in China. Ndesandjo has recently released a semi-autobiographical novel, revealing the abusive nature of their father.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar