Listen to Howard Fineman gush about Jay Carney, currently Joe Biden's press aide and soon to be the new Robert Gibbs:
Gibbs was one of the first hires by the original proto-campaign, and was with the presidential entourage from the start. In the early days, he played Sancho Panza to Axelrod's Don Quixote. He was best at deflecting news, rather than creating it. The Obama story was so compelling that the main goal of his campaign in 2007 and '08 was to not screw it up.
Carney has proven that he can excel at that same cautious game, but he can play it at a deeper, more confident level, given his long history in the mainstream media (he was at Time for nearly 20 years, including three as D.C. Bureau Chief). He has handled Vice President Joe Biden's account well, prevented the gaffe-prone veep from gaffery. He also managed to help Biden get some good publicity, including a laudatory New York Times Magazine story that portrayed the vice president as a powerful, behind-the-scenes player.
Carney is a card-carrying and evidently venerated member of The Village, as it's sometimes called: the true A-list of Washington media insiders who go to one another's parties and donate to one another's charities and such, and who, rather less benignly, establish what passes for conventional wisdom in Washington. Sally Quinn is probably, still, The Village's mayor, although some are surely looking into term-limits referenda.
I, you may have guessed, am not a member of The Village. And I don't want to be; I prefer standing a bit outside all of that. I used to resent this a little, I will admit to you, but I'm too old for that now, and I just want to stay home with my daughter anyway. Besides, I spent my formative years in New York, and I guess I was a member of the New York Village, although it doesn't exist there in anything like the same self-regarding way.
Anyhoo. Carney. Will he be a net plus is the question. Probably yes, if only because it seems everyone was tired of Gibbs' act. Nothing against Gibbs. It's an occupational hazard and is inevitable. The fact that Carney is liked and respected by the local media probably redounds to the president's benefit on the margins. It's not like anyone in the White House press corps will sit on a juicy story because they like Jay Carney, but they'll maybe give a little more weight to his spin, that sort of thing. As was the case, certainly, with Tony Snow, who did the job for Dubya for a time (and died far too young of cancer).
Fineman thinks the pieces are all now in place:
...by choosing [Carney] as his new press secretary, President Barack Obama has completed his swift and thorough transition from crusading outsider to shrewd insider as he prepares to deal with the wild folk of the Tea Party, Karl Rove and the Republican kneecappers, and an electorate still fearful that the world is spinning out of control.Say this about Obama: He is adaptable, he is a survivor and he has a supreme desire to win...
...Obama came to the White House in the manner of Jimmy Carter, with whom he was, early on, mistakenly compared. But while Carter never expanded his circle beyond the "Georgians," Obama has, with stunning swiftness, retooled his administration to play hardball in the D.C. League.
Wow. Well, if you say so, Howard. It's remarkable to me how quickly the aforementioned conventional wisdom has decided that the guys who won last year's election by historic margins are probably headed for doom. Or am I over-reading things? And it's not because of the librul media. It's because, as I keep saying, the Republicans very much appear to be putting themselves in the politically untenable position of wanting to cut programs by percentages they'll never be cut by. It's also happening, I think, because most observers look at the likely GOP 2012 field and go meh.
There is a quiz this Friday! It will be posted this afternoon, and it's quite a fun one, so stay alert, Bert.
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