I used to love these Saturday cartoons, but I gotta admit, Droopy Dog is forever ruined for me because of that traitor Joe Lieberman. And guess what, boys and girls? The most craven politico of them all, Joe "Screw my constituency, it's all about me" Lieberman will be on Face the Nation this week, disgustingly unrepentant about his complete 180 on health care reform. But perhaps in response, the White House is sending out a bunch of spokespeople to make sure that that needy, attention-whore sell-out isn't the only one setting the dialog, with Valerie Jarrett on This Week, David Axelrod on Face the Nation and David Plouffe on Meet the Press. But the ultimate cartoon, the completely shameless fact-free zone has to be awarded to Fox News Sunday, because their sole guest this week is none other than Rush Limbaugh. Excuse me while I lose my breakfast.
ABC's "This Week" - White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.
CBS' "Face the Nation" - White House senior adviser David Axelrod; Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.
NBC's "Meet the Press" - Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner; David Plouffe, former Obama presidential campaign manager; author Jon Krakauer.
NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Katty Kay, Howard Fineman, Mark Whitaker, Mary Jordan. Topics: Afghanistan and Health Care and How They Will Determine Obama's Legacy. One Year Later: Why Isn't Obama's White House as Brilliant as His Campaign? Meter Questions: Will Afghanistan define President Obama's legacy more than health care? YES: 6 NO: 6; Is the Far Right more likely than the White House to have its hardball tactics backfire? YES: 7 No: 5.
CNN's "State of the Union" - House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio; Gov. Haley Barbour, R-Miss.
CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Matthew Hoh, the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, gives Fareed one of his first interviews since resigning. Plus, we have a superb discussion on the economy with two great minds -- Martin Wolf of the Financial Times and Robert Schiller, the economist who accurately predicted the financial crisis and the stock market collapse of 2000.
CNN's "Amanpour" - Zalmay Khalilzad, former US Ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan & UN; Tom Ricks, author of Fiasco, and Tahera Shairzay of Women for Afghan Women.
"Fox News Sunday" - Rush Limbaugh, conservative radio talk show host.
Is there really nothing more the White House can do about this? Seems like pretty weak tea to tell them to "think about it." Here's hoping there's some arm-twisting going on behind the scenes:
In the wake of reports that Goldman Sachs is set to pay a record 23 billion in bonuses this year, the President’s Senior Adviser David Axelrod told me this morning that he thinks big banks dishing out bonuses to their employees is “offensive” and advises banks to “think through what they are doing.”
“The bonuses are offensive and to the firms that still have federal TARP money there’s some jurisdiction, the pay master of Treasury is working on trying to limit that,” Axelrod said. “You’ve seen a lot of firms go to stock rather than cash, so at least people have a stake in the success of their company and they’re not just walking away with cash-making short-term decisions.”
“They ought to think through what they are doing and they ought to understand that a year ago a lot of these institutions were teetering on the brink and the United States government and taxpayers came to their defense. They have responsibilities and they ought to meet those responsibilities.”
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After Wednesday night's speech, Bill O was running with McCain's original idea to "fix" health care by opening up all insurance companies to compete in all states. The problem with that is that each state has its own laws governing health care and it would cause incredible conflicts that could not be resolved. BillO is actually stumping for the federal government to destroy states' rights and their laws. Wow.
BillO: Why wouldn't the president say, let's let everybody compete. Let's let all the insurance companies compete nation wide and that will drive the price down...
Axelrod: Well first of all we have a system of state regulation, you know that of the insurance industry that makes that difficult. What we want is these individual market places. Some markets have competition, other markets don't.
BillO: The Feds can override the states...
Axelrod: Excuse me?
BillO: The Feds can override the states, you know that. You can make it so that all health insurance companies compete nationwide.
Axelrod: This is a historic moment with you calling for the feds overriding the states. I didn't realize you had that...
O'Reilly: Federal jurisdiction, you know federal jurisdiction takes precedence in almost every legislative area...
Axelrod was so shocked that he had to ask BillO to repeat himself. O'Reilly is a socialist now.
This is another example of how disingenuous conservatives are. If they want something---everything goes....Now he can't complain about anything the federal government does from now on because what he's saying is far more radical than anything that has been put forth by the Obama administration. Can you imagine the uproar that would take place if the president said he was going to override the states?
David Gregory paints this phony outrage as a firestorm, but Friedman has to correct him. Even Tom Brokaw was stunned at the ignorance and stupidity of the right wingers going ballistic over President Obama's speech to our school kids.
MR. GREGORY: We brought it up with David Axelrod. Well, this has created such a firestorm. Here's the New Canaan Public Schools, writing a parent letter, and in it they say this. "In developing their plans our principals have considered issues such as developmental appropriateness, curricular relevance, the time at which the speech is being broadcast and the importance of teachers assuming responsibility for the selection of instructional materials. In elementary schools the administration and faculty will view the speech, download it and after discussing it, make decisions regarding how it might be used in the future--including deciding its appropriateness for various grade levels. Parents will be notified, if and when, the decision to show the speech is made." Tom Brokaw, talk about tortured language. What's going on here?
MR. FRIEDMAN: Signs of the apocalypse. I mean, really.
MR. BROKAW: It's stunning to me. I come from a time and a place in America where it would be thrilling to have a president of the United States address your school about the importance of studying and staying in school. And this president, whatever else you think about his political philosophy, is a symbol of working hard, coming from difficult circumstances and getting to where he is in part because of education. I think it's so ripe for satire, it's unbelievable. The superintendent of the Gettysburg Public School System said today that they have devised a plan for students to be shielded from a President Abraham Lincoln who will be coming to make an address. Look, that is the most tortured thing I can possibly imagine, what we just read there. It sounds like East Germany trying to form some restrictions on people leaving the eastern sector to go into the western sector. I think it's perfectly appropriate for parents to say, "I don't want my child to hear that. I would rather keep them out or put them in a different school that day." But this is completely out of control, in my judgment. And it's not--it's not partisan. I mean, if--when I was a student or when my children were in school...
MR. GREGORY: Right.
MR. BROKAW: ...if it had been Dwight Eisenhower or John Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson or Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan or George Bush, the idea of hearing a president of the United States saying we should study hard and that's how we advance and we all need to get in on, on this, I think is an appropriate message.
MR. GREGORY: Mayor Giuliani, you ran for president and one of the things that I've noticed in my experience covering a Republican president,George W. Bush, is the lack of respect for the institution of the presidency. Whether it's people saying during Bush's time, "Hey, he's not my president." Well, no, yes, he is. Does that trouble you?
MR. GIULIANI: Yes, it does, and Tom is right. But the difference is we looked at President Eisenhower or President Reagan, even up to about that point, even President Bush 41 differently. There's a lack of respect for the president, there's a lack of respect for politicians. And David Axelrod said, "Well, this isn't politics." Everything the president does nowadays is politics, for better or worse. And I think that's what you're seeing. You're seeing people distrust the president's motives or the administration's motives. It's not just about the speech, it's about the lesson plan. I think it's unfortunate and I think, you know, what's the--it almost seems a shame to say what's the harm in a president speaking to a group of children.
FMR. REP. FORD: I wish when I was in fourth...
MR. GIULIANI: I think, I think the president should be given the opportunity to do it.
MR. FRIEDMAN: But David, you know, you said, it's a firestorm. And we live in the age of firestorms. You know, today, or this week, it's the president speaking in school. What it needs is for people to stand up and say that's flat out stupid, OK? That's flat out stupid what you're talking about. The president of the United States, addressing schoolchildren in this country to study hard, work hard because that's the way you advance in today's global economy. And instead of that, we kind of dance around it, you know. It's flat out stupid.
Wow, Friedman said something I can get behind here. "Signs of the apocalypse." That's how their reaction is to everything done by the president. Why didn't Gregory call it stupid too? Rudy couldn't even defend their actions. That's saying a lot when the only thing he can come up with is that it's all politics now. How does that make it OK? When will the media start acting like the f*&king media? They can't even do it for something as absurd as this.
Anything You Can Do from Annie, Get Your Gun (1950)
It's the closest approximation of the Sunday shows I can think of right now: Annie Oakley and Frank Butler trying to one-up each other, screaming face to face and fighting about nothing of substance. Although I can't complain this week that the Democrats are non-existent or out-numbered (and hooray! the Obama administration has figured out they need to be out there too), my feeling is that the discussion will not be any more substantive than Annie and Frank's. WH Spokesperson Robert Gibbs will be on This Week, Senior Adviser David Axelrod will be on Meet the Press and Education Secretary Arne Duncan will be on Face the Nation, presumably to discuss the latest GOP hissy fit du jour of Obama's planned speech to students. But we'll also get lots of health care jabs as well, with Dr. Thomas Frieden of CDC on State of the Union and Howard Dean and Newt Gingrich on Fox News Sunday.
ABC's "This Week" - White House press secretary Robert Gibbs; former Sens. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Bob Dole, R-Kan.; Reps. Mike Pence, R-Ind., and Maxine Waters, D-Calif.
CBS' "Face the Nation" - Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
NBC's "Meet the Press" - David Axelrod, White House senior adviser; Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor; Harold Ford Jr., Democratic Leadership Council chairman.
NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Eugene Robinson, Katty Kay, Gloria Borger and Michael Duffy. Topics: How does President Obama need to reset the health care debate? Should Ted Kennedy have shown more public penance for Chappaquiddick? Meter Questions: Will outspoken fringe players dominate GOP for the rest of Obama's term? YES: 9 NO: 3;
If unemployment is still high next year, will Obama revise his tax proposals? YES: 11 No: 1.
CNN's "State of the Union" - Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn.; Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Ben Nelson, D-Neb.
CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Some of our greatest hits: First, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the limits of American power. Then former New York State governor Elliot Spitzer's unique perspective on the financial crisis and the Dalai Lama's perspective on the world.
"Fox News Sunday" - Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.; Howard Dean, former national Democratic Party chairman; John Podesta, head of the Center for American Progress; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.
Basically, his strategy is to wait until the very last second to insert President Obama back into the debate after it gets away from him. Unfortunately, it also reflects how badly the president has handled the situation by not standing behind any firm idea one way or another. We saw it again and again during the campaign and David is doing it just that with health care reform.
The White House says Obama may detail his health care goals before Senate negotiators finish.
The president is considering a speech in the next week or so in which he would be "more prescriptive" about what he feels Congress must include in a bill, top adviser David Axelrod said Tuesday in an interview. The speech might occur before the Sept. 15 deadline the White House gave to Senate negotiators to seek a bipartisan bill, Axelrod said. He suggested that two key Republicans have not bargained in good faith.
Congress reconvenes next Tuesday after an August recess in which critics of Obama's health proposals dominated many public forums.
Some Obama allies, watching his approval ratings tumble in polls along with support for a health care overhaul, have urged the president to take a more hands-on approach. They feel he gave too much leeway to Congress, where one bill has passed three House committees, another has passed a Senate committee and a third has been bogged down in protracted negotiations in the Senate Finance Committee.
Axelrod indicated that Obama would not offer new proposals but would be more specific about his top priorities.
"The ideas are all there on the table," Axelrod said. "Now we are in a new phase, and it's time to pull the strands of these together."
He said there is serious discussion in the White House of Obama "giving a speech that lays out in specific ways what he thinks" about the essential elements of a health care bill.
Axelrod said it was possible that the speech could occur before a planned Sept. 15 Obama address on health care in Pittsburgh.
Obama has called for innovations such as a public health insurance plan to compete with private insurers, but he has not insisted on it. It was not clear Tuesday the degree to which he might press for various proposals in a new speech.
Obama also plans to meet with Democratic congressional leaders on Tuesday.
Axelrod condemned recent comments by two chief Senate Republican negotiators -- Charles Grassley of Iowa and Mike Enzi of Wyoming -- who have sharply criticized key elements of Democrats' health care plans even as they insisted that a workable bipartisan plan was possible...read on
A tip: When a reporter quotes a single source in a story (quoting him eight times, no less) and then has a random controversial comment from "an aide" -- chances are that aide is Axelrod.
Axelrod apparently is missing the polls.
August Quinnipiac national poll (question 23): 62% support a public option. 80% of Dems, 64% of Independents, and even 40% of Republicans
August Research 2000 poll of Max Baucus's "red state" Montana constituents: 47% support and 44% oppose the public option
August Research 2000 poll of Blue Dog Jim Cooper's constituents: 61% support and 28% oppose the public option
Axelrod -- do you know the surest way to ensure that Dems running in 2010 have a diminished base and lose independent voters? Force them to oppose the public option!
The Republicans won't participate, of course. The liberals he armtwists will resent him for forcing them to walk the plank with their own voters. His base will be demoralized and verging on active hostility. The mythical "center" will shrug their shoulders and move on to the next issue. (They are, by their own definition, disloyal.) Only the Blue Dog and DLC politicians who got paid by the medical industry will happily stand by his side at the signing ceremony, with visions of lobbyist cash dancing in their heads. I hope he really, really likes them because they will be the only enthusiastic supporters he has left after this.
I have a question: is it true that Real Americans greatly admire politicians who loathe their own supporters and publicly and repeatedly kick them once they obtain office? I honestly don't know the answer to that, but it seems that the Democrats are convinced of it. It's an interesting psychology, to say the least, but one which I have never understood.
Update: Keep in mind that it ain't over til it's over. Obama is worried about his approval ratings, but he's not stupid. He sees the same legislative roadblocks that everyone else sees and has to realize by now that the path to health care is through the Democratic Party alone. And that means the liberal are still in play whether he likes it or not.
AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Richard Trumka told the press that this means the 11 million member-strong labor organization “won’t support the bill if it doesn’t have the public option in it.” Today, Trumka appeared on MSNBC and explained to Norah O’Donnell that the inclusion of these three elements marks the difference between “coming up with a bill that you have reform and actually having health insurance reform.”
So the Baucus debacle now seems dead, reconciliation for healthcare reform more likely than ever, and the Dems' slipping poll numbers arguing for bolder, conclusive action--for change we can believe in. All this leads to an interesting situation for Obama and Congress, as Greg point out:
Interestingly, this has created a built-in tension: While Senate Dems have more control over whether health care succeeds, the stakes are higher for House Dems. It’s a tougher cycle for the House, aides say, meaning they’d likely face bigger losses if Senate Dems can’t resolve their impasse with Republicans or if they don’t opt for reconciliation to get reform done.
Either way, if they look hard enough, liberals can locate something of a silver lining in all the bad news: It ups the pressure on Congressional Dems not just to do health care this year, but do it right.
I find it hard to believe that the White House would be so stupid as to think that making the least popular choices to the majority of Americans making under $50,000-$60,000/year would be just the ticket to increase the President's popularity. Actually, just kidding, I don't find it so hard.
It goes on and on...Now it's suddenly becoming the Olympia Snowe Bill from CNN's Ed Henry:
HENRY: My colleague Dana Bash and I have learned from a source, each one of us, that this White House right now is very quietly in serious conversations with Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, a key moderate. She is basically the last Republican out of those gang of six senators who have been negotiating, really the last Republican that has an open line to this White House right now. What we're hearing that she's talking about with White House staff is sort of a scaled-back bill that would focus on insurance reforms that both sides could agree to, but would not have a full public option, instead, would have a so-called trigger.
What that means in layman's terms is basically that the insurance companies would have a couple of years to make some dramatic changes. If they do not make those changes, then a public option would be triggered. So, it would be used down the road. They would hope that this would appease liberals by saying it's not completely off the table. And the big hope is that this could bring along another moderate Republican, like maybe Susan Collins of Maine, some conservative Democrats, like Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu in the Senate, who don't want a public option, but would sort of potentially be open to a trigger like this.
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Dana Milbank wasn't the only Beltway Villager all wanked out about President Obama prearranging a question with HuffPo's Nico Pitney yesterday. On Meet the Press, David Gregory pressed David Axelrod about it, suggesting that somehow this sort of thing is anti-democratic:
MR. GREGORY: I just want to be clear. Did the White House coordinate with a reporter about a question to be asked at a press conference?
MR. AXELROD: The White House didn't coordinate with the reporter about a question, we were looking for a way to get questions from within Iran. We could--we did not have access to Iranian journalists.
MR. GREGORY: So you talked to a reporter beforehand and said, "Could you ask a question about--from--directly from Iran at a press conference?"
MR. AXELROD: We said if you--we, we, we, we, we knew that he had been and he was very publicly involved in getting--in trafficking and communications in and out of Iran, and we felt it was important...
MR. GREGORY: Well, why is it appropriate to coordinate with a reporter about what's asked at a time when we're championing democracy around the world?
MR. AXELROD: No, no, David, you miss...
MR. GREGORY: Is that, is that what you should do at a press conference?
MR. AXELROD: You're not, you're not listening to what I said. We didn't coordinate with, with him about what was asked.
MR. GREGORY: Right.
MR. AXELROD: In fact, he asked probably one of the most--the toughest and most probing questions at that press conference. We had no idea what he was going to ask.
MR. GREGORY: But you coordinated with him about, about that subject of a question beforehand.
MR. AXELROD: He was a, he was a, he was a, he was a vehicle to get questions from Iran asked at this press conference, and that we thought was not only appropriate but, but necessary.
MR. GREGORY: If President Bush had done that, don't you think Democrats would have said that's outrageous?
Gregory is a Beltway Villager, and like all such folk, he wants to cling to the well-honed myths that preserve their favorite fictions about themselves. One of these is that White House press conferences are actually exercises in democratic, even egalitarian questioning of government officials by the people's representatives in the press corps.
So they are loathe to admit a simple reality: White House press conferences are in cold reality carefully stage-managed affairs, and the main beneficiaries of this arrangement have been the handful of "elite" reporters from big-name media outlets who traditionally have dominated them.
We're perfectly aware that presidents have for some long time gone into these conferences with a prearranged list of reporters upon whom they are going to call. The result has been an immense trivialization of press conferences, because those "elite" reporters have demonstrated over the years their eagerness to indulge trivial, celebrity-media-driven questions at the expense of serious policy matters. In the process, they've become increasingly manipulable.
This trend reached its apotheosis back when Jeff Gannon was lobbing softball questions to President Bush and White House press secretary Scott McClellan. Not only was Gannon a phony journalist, he was being regularly selected to be among the main questioners at the daily briefings.
Considering that this same White House never came clean on exactly why it issued credentials to this fraud -- and especially considering that David Gregory never once objected to it -- his outrage over the Obama White House's calling on Pitney for the toughest question any reporter at that conference asked seems strangely misplaced.
On the other hand, considering that this White House's admission of people like Pitney into the circle of people who get to ask questions at these conferences represents a direct erosion of the "elite" status of people like David Gregory -- and in fact an opening of these questions to many more "representatives of the people" -- it's really not too surprising.
I've been criticizing the president for not speaking out more forcibly that a a public plan MUST be included in health care reform. I know he's playing his cards tight to the vest so republicans have less to work with as they apply their usual attacks on any kind of meaningful health care reform, but I still don't like it. On Meet the Press, David Axelrod gave one of the strongest indications I've seen that President Obama firmly stands for a strong public option. He also called it "the Public Choice." I can't tell you how important the latest polling was on health care which told the politicians that America wants the government to be involved in fixing the health care system. Gregory used Howard Dean's statement on The Hill about America voting for change to get the segment rolling.(rough transcript)
Axelrod: We believe strongly in the public choice, not something ...what the President was saying was illogical were the same people saying that the government is incompetent, that the government can't run anything, that the government shouldn't be involved in anything, but we can't let that be involved in any of the choices because it'll be an unfair advantage against the insurance companies.
Gregory: When it comes to the public plan though, no ultimatums from the President?
---
Axelrod: Well, the president believes strongly in a public choice, he's made that very, very clear. He's made that clear private and publicly and we're going to continue to do so.
Gregory: But the president is not going to ram this through, his priorities through?
Axelrod: Well, I just told what the president's priorities were are and he won't sign a bill that does not meet those priorities.
Gregory: Can there be a successful outcome in the president's mind without a health care reform plan without a public plan?
Axelrod: I think the president wants a robust public option to compete against the private plans.
We're getting closer to finishing up our Blue America/Blanche Lincoln/Public Option ads as we fight to make Democratic politicians stand up for us and not the health insurance companies on health care reform. You can still donate here: Blue America's Campaign For Health Care
Meet the Press: "White House senior adviser David Axelrod will discuss President Barack Obama's agenda with host David Gregory. From the other side of the aisle will be former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
ABC's "This Week," David Axelrod along with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a major player in the health care debate from his perch as ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee.
"Face the Nation" Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour gives his first Sunday interview since succeeding Sanford as chairman of the Republican Governors Association last week. Also, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, will sit down to provide her perspective on Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Afghanistan.
"Fox News Sunday." Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) debate health care reform. Army Gen. Ray Odierno, will give an assessment as American forces prepare to withdraw from major cities.
State of the Union" Gen. Ray Odierno along with Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) and BP Capital CEO T. Boone Pickens, the Texas oilman who's been pushing wind and natural gas as major power sources.
ABC's "This Week" - White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel; House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.
CBS' "Face the Nation" - David Axelrod, White House senior adviser; Gov. Ed Rendell, D-Pa.; Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association.
NBC's "Meet the Press" - Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council; FreedomWorks chairman and former Rep. Dick Armey, R-Texas; Democratic Leadership Council chairman and former Rep. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn.
CNN's "State of the Union" - Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano; Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and John Ensign, R-Nev.; Gov. David Paterson, D-N.Y.
"Fox News Sunday" - Former CIA Director Michael Hayden; Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.; Denyce Graves, opera singer.
David Axelrod responded to Dick Cheney's recent criticism of President Obama Sunday on CNN's State of the Union. "[President Bush] has behaved like a statesman," Axelrod told John King.
Axelrod disagreed with Cheney's assertion that Obama's terrorism policies were failing. "I find it supremely ironic, on a day when we were meeting with NATO, to talk about the continued threat from al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they're still plotting against us eight years -- or seven years later," he said. "I think the question for Mr. Cheney is, how could that be? How could this have gone so long? Why are they still in business?"
President Barack Obama's Senior White House advisor responded to criticism from former vice president Dick Cheney.
"Apparently the vice president is having a hard time dealing with the verdict of the American people," said Axelrod.
Cheney has criticized the new administration's plans to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.
"When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an al-Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry," Cheney told Politico.
Axelrod hit back at Cheney this morning on NBC's Meet the Press.
"What he said here is really irresponsible," said Axelrod. "President Bush could not have been more generous in the transition in every conceivable way. When he left he said, 'I'm rooting for you guys. I hope you do well.' I believe that. Apparently the memo didn't go down the line."
In the Russert days of Meet the Press, the Bush administration knew that it was the best venue for them to "catapult the propaganda" without taking those pesky follow-up questions or provide context. New host David Gregory didn't appear to be much of an improvement--at least when the administration in power were Republicans. Of course, now that the White House is inhabited with Democrats, Gregory seems to have found a journalistic need to question federal plans, even if it means reaching back to Republican talking points that were thoroughly debunked...by NBC colleague Keith Olbermann.
Gregory asked Senior White House Advisor David Axelrod about the part of the stimulus bill that will allegedly give the government the right to dictate medical practices to doctors, a outright fabrication conceived by Betsy McCaughey and furthered in the mainstream media by Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh. Heather did a post on Olbermann's dismantling of this particularly disingenuous slur against the stimulus bill at Video Cafe.
But even after his own network shows the falsity of the charge, Gregory still asks Axelrod to defend it...Hmmm...where is Gregory getting his sourcing for such a pathetic attempt at being a journalist? Drudge and Limbaugh? David, do you realize what this says about your credibility?
Senior White House advisor David Axelrod told Fox's Chris Wallace that American can expect to see results from the stimulus bill soon.
WALLACE: Let's turn to the stimulus plan. Austin Goolsby says it package should be working in six months and one of the signs will be at the end of the year whether unemployment is 8% or 11%. How quickly will we know if the package is working and how should we measure it?
AXELROD: I think there'll be signs quickly. The package will help fund infrastructure programs and other programs that are ready to go around the country but it's going take time for that to -- to show up in the statistics. The president has said it's likely to get worse before it gets better. It is true that without this program, it could be -- it could be much, much worse. And so I don't expect the arrow to bend down by the end of the year, but I do expect the rise in unemployment to be retarded by the things that were done this week.
WALLACE: So does six months sound like a fair marker to begin to see progress?
AXELROD: Well, it depends how you measure progress. As you say, where we see activity as a result of this, absolutely, all over the country you're going to see shovels in the ground. You're going to see construction projects underway. The other thing you're going to see are people not being laid off, police and firefighters and teachers, because states are now going to have funding to forestall those things. I think you'll see an effect of it, but in terms of the overall economy, we're in the worst recession since World War II, and it's going to take -- it took us a long time to get into this mess. It's going to take us a while to get out of.
Republicans seem to be viewing the nascent Obama administration with some dread, half expecting Democrats to do to them what they've been receiving for the past eight years and more. So unsurprisingly, Karl Rove seemed to be on Chris Wallace's mind Sunday when he interviewed David Axelrod of the Obama team on Fox:
Chris Wallace: Finally, you are going to be the new senior adviser to the president -- I don't know if you're going to like this comparison, but are you going to be the Karl Rove of the administration, in the sense of the intersection of policy and politics?
David Axelrod: I've never accepted that comparison. Look, my role with Barack Obama for the past six years has been to help the communications operation impart his message, his values and his vision to the American people, and I expect to continue to do that. My role is circumscribed to those responsibilities.
I'm not trying to build the Democratic Party or any of these other -- I think Mr. Rove had quite an expansive portfolio. I think mine is very focused.
