THE DAILY BLADE: Obama’s One-Two Cha-Cha-Cha
The Washington Times has taken note of the number of times this summer that Obama administration officials made the rounds of the Sunday news talk shows only to have the White House restate or retract what they said.
In July, when Vice President Joseph Biden told "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos that Israel can take unilateral action if it deems Iran an existential threat, Obama contradicted him the next day in a CNN interview.
A month later, Tweedledum (Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner) and Tweedledee (Chief Economic Adviser Lawrence Summers) both suggested that the ballooning deficit may prompt President Barack Hussein Obama to reassess his oft-stated pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class, which prompted White House spokesman Robert Gibbs to contradict the twins.
And a couple of weeks after that, when a left-wing firestorm erupted after Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told “State of the Union” host John King that the administration did not consider a government-run alternative to private health insurance “the essential element” of health care overhaul legislation, Gibbs wasted no time denying that Obama was abandoning the public option.
The Washington Times explains the Obama administration’s one-step-forward, one-step-back communications approach:
To those familiar with how a White House message machine is meant to operate, the Sunday talk-show episodes have become sources of intense curiosity. Were these policy trial balloons by which the White House intentionally floated controversial ideas to gauge reaction? Or were these cases of high-level officials simply saying the wrong thing? …
"It's logical to conclude that they float these trial balloons to see what reaction [sic] will be," said [Dana Perino, President George W. Bush's press secretary]. "When Geithner and Summers said that the administration would consider a middle-class tax hike, I said, 'I give them about 30 hours before the White House disavows what was said.' " …
"If I were a Cabinet official," Mrs. Perino said, "I'd think twice before going out on the Sunday shows because on Monday you could get thrown under the bus."
This spate of mixed-up messages – you could call them “The Summer Of Obama’s Mal-Content” – is nothing new.
Back in May, The New York Times described Obama’s “course correction” on a variety of national security and terrorism issues as “leading by second thought,” while The Wall Street Journal snickered about “White House creativity in portraying these U-turns [endorsing Bush-Cheney antiterror policies he once opposed, such as military tribunals] as epic change.” The Washington Post characterized what The Journal called Obama’s “switcheroo” as “an important facet of Obama's decision-making, which is his capacity to rethink positions and change his mind as he learns more or conditions change.”
That’s just a fancy way of saying Obama is a hard-core flip-flopper.
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