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My Lord, I Have A Cunning Plan

Aug 11, 2010
By .
Politics & Current Events

I love a mystery.

Today's mystery: what is the operating principle — the strategy — behind White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' multi-day freak-out?

“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”

The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”

Of those who complain that Obama caved to centrists on issues such as healthcare reform, Gibbs said: “They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”

It's a question that's important for Gibbs' resume, if nothing else. He's done an adequate job so far. But a pilot who has a perfect safety record until he flies a jumbo jet into a mountain in a fit of pique will not be remembered as a good pilot.

Perhaps Gibbs has some elaborate cunning plan that will unfold over the next few news cycles. But he seems to be ignoring some fairly significant points:

First, you dance with the one what brung you, even if the one what brung you is a goddam dirty hippie.

Second, to the extent Gibbs believes he is shoring up support from moderates and the Right by executing a sort of Sister Souljah moment, he fails to grasp that (a) the Right scorns weakness and never responds helpfully to concessions, and (b) hardly anyone genuinely gave a shit about what Sister Soulah thought, but nobody — least of all moderates — gives a shit about what the "Professional Left" thinks.

Third, to the extent you're going to get all indignant about being compared to Bush, you might want to evaluate whether you have, in fact, abandoned or reneged upon most of the ways you said you would do things differently than Bush.

The best case scenario is that Gibbs is amusing and emboldening the Right, offending the Left, and mystifying and concerning the middle, who will think "why is the White House getting all spittle-flecked about criticism from people I haven't heard of and don't care about?" The worst case scenario is that too many voters perceive, correctly, that the White House is saying that it is completely crazy to expect Barack Obama to abide by the principles he articulated as grounds to choose him. All politicians think that. But most are smart enough not to send their Mouth of Sauron out to say it.

Last 5 posts by Ken White

29 Comments
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29 Comments

  1. Karl Rove  •  Aug 11, 2010 @5:11 pm

    My fiendish plan is working…

  2. SPQR  •  Aug 11, 2010 @5:43 pm

    I think, Ken, you need to rethink this sentence: "He’s done an adequate job so far. "

    I don't think he has, and I think this stupidity from him is of the same quality as the rest of his 18month tenure in the job.

  3. Jonathan C. Hansen  •  Aug 11, 2010 @5:59 pm

    Have to agree with SPQR – Obama is one of the more egregious "bait and switch" jobs. The list of discrepancies between the campaign pledges and actual actions by the administration just keeps growing and becoming more surreal.

  4. SPQR  •  Aug 11, 2010 @6:09 pm

    Jonathan, I think you interpreted my comment as being about Obama. But it was actually about Gibbs. Not that I disagree with your comment, but it was my original intent to be on topic.

  5. Scott Jacobs  •  Aug 11, 2010 @6:18 pm

    Have to agree with SPQR here. If you think this is an adequate job, I would really hate to think what a Press Secretary – a person who's job it is to be an effective and articulate mouthpiece for the White House – would have to do to be considered to be doing a poor job.

    And if Gibbs has a cunning plan, as the internet meme says, "I don't think you thought your cunning plan all the way through".

  6. Ken  •  Aug 11, 2010 @6:29 pm

    I was kind of giving him the benefit of the doubt.

  7. Mike  •  Aug 12, 2010 @4:20 am

    Hahaha, "Mouth of Sauron." Awesome.

  8. David  •  Aug 12, 2010 @5:59 am

    Of all those thus pated, he is, when pated, among the most addle-pated.

  9. Chris  •  Aug 12, 2010 @6:53 am

    It's sad to watch my congressman respond in the expected ways.

  10. Jdog  •  Aug 12, 2010 @7:40 am

    Sorry; I think it's simpler. Like the high school girl who is so in love with her ne-er-do-well boyfriend that she just doesn't understand why everybody doesn't see how wonderful he is, the Obama worshippers simply don't understand how anybody can fail to understand that everything Obama does or doesn't do is entirely proper, simply because so full of obamawonderfullnessery.

    Gibbs usually hides the worship better.

  11. Linus  •  Aug 12, 2010 @10:08 am

    One has to wonder what inner demons and personality traits would impel someone to want to be a spokesman in the first place. I mean, as an attorney, I….oh. Well, shit.

    I was going to make a brilliant point, but I think I'll just keep it to myself for now.

  12. Victor Milan  •  Aug 12, 2010 @10:25 am

    Now, let's be fair to Obama: he promised to give us more war than Bush, and more welfare for incompetent but well-connected billionaires.

    And he's delivered.

  13. mojo  •  Aug 12, 2010 @11:35 am

    Or he could just be incompetent.

    Occam's razor.

  14. Chris  •  Aug 12, 2010 @12:47 pm

    Have you ever been to a democratic caucus? Being in a democratic white house must be like being in a caucus meeting that you can never leave.

  15. Charles  •  Aug 12, 2010 @12:56 pm

    As all of you are either (a) libertarians who disapprove of Obama for reasons different than the targets of Gibbs ire (with some overlap on troop withdrawal, maybe) or (b) Ezra, here is how I, a liberal who has been generally happy about Obama's performance, feel about Gibbs' fit of pique:

    It is about fucking time.

  16. Charles  •  Aug 12, 2010 @1:07 pm

    Satisfying. And certainly not hurtful. The GOP has gone so far off of the rails in the last two years that I am confident that (a) nobody remotely tolerable to the far left will be nominated by the Republicans to challege Obama and (b) nobody is willing to commit Nadercide.

  17. Patrick  •  Aug 12, 2010 @1:44 pm

    I know his mom.

    She's a very nice lady.

  18. Jdog  •  Aug 12, 2010 @1:51 pm

    I think Charles is correct as to a) and b), but missing c): Obama needs an energized left wing to give money, work, and vote for both Democrats this year, and him in 2012. Pissing them off isn't going to do it; some of them may well sit on their hands this fall.

    Gibbs needs to get his kneepads back on.

  19. Jack Marshall  •  Aug 12, 2010 @10:13 pm

    By what standard can it be said that Gibbs has done an adequate job? His job is to communicate, and a typical Gibbs sentence has more "ahs' in it than an aria. He's the most inarticulate press secretary within memory, and I remember a lot of them. I look at him as a barometer of how much incompetence the White House will tolerate (or not notice) and the reading is "too damn much."

  20. Ken  •  Aug 12, 2010 @10:19 pm

    It's never the controversial things that I put a lot of thought into that people disagree with. It's the throwaway lines, often the ones just stuck in to set up a joke.

  21. Scott Jacobs  •  Aug 12, 2010 @11:35 pm

    "The GOP has gone so far off of the rails in the last two years that I am confident that (a) nobody remotely tolerable to the far left will be nominated by the Republicans to challege Obama"

    That's a pretty long list there, Chucky.

    The left needs to stop going utterly insane whenever Palin is mentioned, and in fact start talking her up, or you'll be looking down the barrel of a Chris Christie or Mitch Daniels come 2012.

  22. Chris  •  Aug 13, 2010 @6:41 am

    I'm with Charles. There's this group of pissy people on the left who just whine all the time. They don't get shit done, they're not the organizers. There aren't enough of them to form a core of GOTV and their incessant complaining's probably the biggest drag on having an enthused democratic party in the fall. Having a certain amount of complaining from the left is useful, but there's a point where their self indulgent fantasies about the overton window are not helping.

  23. Ken  •  Aug 13, 2010 @6:54 am

    I accept all of that as true, Chris. But I don't think it means that the White House Press Secretary should be having a snit about them.

  24. Charles  •  Aug 13, 2010 @8:48 am

    Who the fuck are you, Scotty? I don't recall us being close enough for you to use a familiar name, much less condescending tone.

    In any event, the left trashing Palin only solidifies her appeal to the right. I'm happy to keep her front-and-center.

  25. Chris  •  Aug 13, 2010 @9:15 am

    Oh, he probably shouldn't. But, like the recent airline steward quitting story, there's a certain amount of "hell, yeah" to it.

  26. Scott Jacobs  •  Aug 13, 2010 @9:15 am

    Who the fuck am I?

    I'm just the guy who finds your oh-so-superior tone (not to mention your belief that TAO is doing a fine job) to be quite… Well, if not "entertaining", then perhaps simply "irksome".

    And you just keep thinking that Palin's the dream girl of the Right. It will make a Daniels, Christie, or Jindal campaign for President all the more enjoyable for me.

    I can only wonder if you, in your worship of President Obama, could even begin to tell me what the biggest difference between the three of them and the Pres.

  27. Ken  •  Aug 13, 2010 @9:18 am

    Oh, he probably shouldn’t. But, like the recent airline steward quitting story, there’s a certain amount of “hell, yeah” to it.

    I think the airline attendant emerged with more dignity intact.

  28. Charles  •  Aug 13, 2010 @9:44 am

    I have no idea what you think was oh-so-superior about my tone. I have a different opinion than yours. I expressed it. While THIS post has a superior tone, nothing in my earlier posts did. You bring out the best in me.

    Obama's policy goals dovetail with what I want them to be in a lot of areas; that's why I think he's done a good job. I didn't "annoint" him, I voted for him and plan to do so again.

    And you completely misinterpret my perspective on Palin. She isn't "the dreamgirl of the right" – she is the dreamgirl of a currently very engaged subset of the right. The really energetic wing of the left supported Obama, an actually electable person (aided by the nomination in opposition of a mercurial septugenarian and a stump-dumb barely-Governor). If the energetic wing of the right backs Palin, I can start the "Four More Years" chant right now. If the Tea Party outgrows their fascination with Palin, 2012 becomes interesting. That's why I support the continued prominence of Palin in the discourse.

  29. Jim  •  Aug 13, 2010 @12:56 pm

    Gibbs should be fired not for the content of his remark but because it was stupid politics as well as exposing how bad of a job he is doing. Starting with the political side unless the point is to get a Republican congress in the fall (which I am not even sure they wouldn't mind) attacking the voters that are most likely to go out and vote as well as donate time and money this close to an election is bad politics. The moderate voices out there can talk how great hippie punching is but it is those towards the ends of the spectrum that fill the volunteer positions and give a shit about politics 365 days a year instead of 1 day a year. Second, Obama is already hurting in other large demo's because of inaction on policy namely Hispanics where his approval rating has dropped almost 30 points as well as with Union because he has broken promises about time tables on the big issues that matter to them. Add that in with the likely drop of of African American turnout and youth turnout in an off cycle election that is not leaving too many groups rushing to the polls. If you want to attack the left do it after the election or he should have done in Jan. To continue this story for at least 2 days is political malpractice.

    If that was not reason enough to can his ass his acknowledged incompetence is. He is bitching that the left is not giving the President credit for what has passed and/or ignored other pieces of legislation. Well is it not his job to craft a message and pass it on to explain what has passed and why its good for America? It's his job not mine or any of the "professional left" to explain why the healtcare act was a great thing and what the left should be happy for instead during the working of that bill we had stories leaking left and right about the president giving away parts of the bill with seemingly nothing in return well its his job to tell us what they got in return or to correct the record. That he thought it was the left calling the aid to states for teachers a bail out is another sign that he doesn't understand shit as I would be really interested to find one member of the professional left that has said that.