October 14, 2010
THE PROBLEM WITH MR. CORN'S ARGUMENT...:
Obama's Inconvenient Interview: Could the White House have picked a worse time to open up to the New York Times Magazine about its mistakes? (David Corn, Oct. 14, 2010, Mother Jones)
[T]he White House with this article (well executed by Baker) has demonstrated a sense of lousy political timing. There are not many days left before voters hit the polls for the critical midterm elections. Now is not the moment for a high-profile "We blew the politics" admission. The White House ought to be in full attack mode. Yet this intriguing tale of presidential second-thoughts, made possible by White House cooperation, is ready-made for endless regurgitation within the media. (Case in point: this article.)The fallout from the Times story will compete with the message the Democrats truly need to hammer home in the next 19 days: A Republican takeover of the House and/or Senate will mark a triumph for the wealthy and such special interests as Big Oil and Big Finance. At this point, Democratic congressional candidates will not be aided by Obama acknowledging the obvious: "We neglected politics." The president could have waited a few weeks before conceding his miscalculations to the New York Times. There will be plenty of time after Election Day for such declarations.
...is that the UR sold himself as somehow above mere politics, so going into attack dog mode is not just unpresidential but unObamessiah. People now realize they have no sense of who he is, do you really want the snarling political hack to be the image they form?
