Rough Day in the Press Office

[ROMAD1]

Car wreck at the White House - The Washington Post

Dana Milbank is not one of the normal Right wing troglodytes that I follow. So, when he writes...

For the White House, it was just the latest entry in the when-it-rains-it-pours ledger. This has been one of the worst stretches of the Obama presidency. In Washington, there is a creeping sense that the bottom has fallen out and that there may be no second term. Privately, senior Obama advisers say they are no longer expecting much economic improvement before the election.

I fully expect that in a few years when they are writing their memoirs, the White House people will argue that having a better focus on the private sector economy would have been a good idea--perhaps because they are trying to ingratiate themselves to the New Democrat who is running against Mitt Romney in 2016.

[Melody]

The thing is that when you read the straight news accounts, it sounds like some sort of medical event. But the press office gives the impression that it was something shady that needs to be covered up and which they need to distance the White House from.

[ROMAD1]

The thing is that when you read the straight news accounts, it sounds like some sort of medical event. But the press office gives the impression that it was something shady that needs to be covered up and which they need to distance the White House from.

Bad instincts on their part. Unless it reflected bad on the original pick. Most people would be sympathetic to a previously unknown illness. The only similar incident in 8 years of the Bush White House was Dick Cheney nearly killing his hunting buddies (which was really probably just him sending a O Muerta message to that guy and others).

[hueytaxi]

Cheney never makes mistakes with ordinance.

[djhutch]

The thing is that when you read the straight news accounts, it sounds like some sort of medical event. But the press office gives the impression that it was something shady that needs to be covered up and which they need to distance the White House from.

I think that comes when your first instinct is political spin/fallout.

[ROMAD1]

Cheney never makes mistakes with ordinance.

I mean who goes duck hunting at a family Italian restaurant in Brooklyn?

[Oblong]

Thus did Jay Carney, the oft-besieged White House press secretary, have another briefing carjacked by bad news. And Carney, who either didn’t know the details of the bizarre episode or wasn’t at liberty to divulge them, had to execute a full range of defensive maneuvers.

“I can simply tell you that he was engaged, as has been reported, in a couple of traffic incidents,” Carney began, as if the secretary, John Bryson, had been photographed by a speed camera or two. Bryson “suffered a seizure, was hospitalized. But beyond that I’ll refer you to Commerce for the details.”

“Is the secretary healthy and fit to serve?” inquired Ben Feller of the Associated Press.

“I would refer you to the Commerce Department.”

Ann Compton of ABC News asked whether the White House chief of staff, who spoke to Bryson, considers the incident serious.

“I don’t have a specific response to give you,” Carney said.

CNN’s Brianna Keilar asked about “the timing of the seizure in relation to the accident.”

“I would refer you, as I said in the past, to the Department of Commerce,” Carney answered.

“I’ve been asking them for hours,” Keilar protested.

“I think I would refer you to the Commerce Department,” was Carney’s rote reply.

The former journalist informed the questioners that he “was not a presiding doctor on this case” and could confirm only that “the commerce secretary was alone, he had a seizure, he was involved in an accident.”

“He was involved in several accidents,” called out April Ryan of American Urban Radio.

“Thank you for the correction,” Carney said. He did not sound grateful.

I couldn't be happier for the former reporter to have to be on the other side now.

[ROMAD1]

The Bizarre White House Reaction to Commerce Secretary John Bryson News

The President doesn't know or care how a member of his Cabinet is doing?

In Carney’s first answer, we learned that President Obama had not spoken with Secretary Bryson. This seemed odd. A cabinet secretary is hospitalized following serious traffic incidents and a police citation and the president does not pick up the phone to check on his welfare?

He really has narrowed his perimeter to Michelle, Axlerod and Jarret.

President Obama certainly has an estranged relationship with his cabinet, preferring to govern mostly out of the White House. But according to White House Visitor Logs, John Bryson actually visited more often than many of his colleagues–a total of 31 times (barring multiple John Brysons). Energy Secretary Steven Chu had visited 17 times and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has only swung by 13 times. To put that in context, Democratic consultant Hilary Rosen has visited the White House 33 times and union boss Richard Trumka has visited 69 times.

Panetta has been both SECDEF and D/CIA....13 times?

[pfife]

Does appearing on the white house visitor log mean you got face time with 44?

So this piece says > 1,000,000 visits in the log... yeah something tells me that's a poor measure of Obama's circle. White House Visitor Log - US News

[ROMAD1]

Does appearing on the white house visitor log mean you got face time with 44?

So this piece says > 1,000,000 visits in the log... yeah something tells me that's a poor measure of Obama's circle. White House Visitor Log - US News

Now that i think of it...the visitor log captured the visits of each and every slug to the OEOB (basically the Policy shop) and Situation room and what not. I kinda imagine Panetta was blowing it off as a government official and Tromka and the other political types were scrupulously putting themselves on the log to show how "important they were".