Reply #6: A White House Out of Step? (Froomkin / WP)

[struggle4progress]

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, January 28, 2005; 12:00 PM

<snip> The conservative Economist magazine, for instance, opines that "the gap between Mr Bush's rhetoric and what is actually happening, or is likely to happen, is embarrassingly wide."

National Journal media columnist William Powers observes that Bush appears to have lost any trace of humility. "He's CEO of the world, and he walks and talks as if he's about to fire everybody. His indifference to tone is mesmerizing, like a work of conceptual art designed to provoke and madden his audience. He's the Marcel Duchamp of American politics." <snip>

Eric Boehlert writes in Salon: "One day after President Bush ordered his Cabinet secretaries to stop hiring commentators to help promote administration initiatives, and one day after the second high-profile conservative pundit was found to be on the federal payroll, a third embarrassing hire has emerged. Salon has confirmed that Michael McManus, a marriage advocate whose syndicated column, 'Ethics & Religion,' appears in 50 newspapers, was hired as a subcontractor by the Department of Health and Human Services to foster a Bush-approved marriage initiative. McManus championed the plan in his columns without disclosing to readers he was being paid to help it succeed.
<snip>

Blogger Wolcott writes: "Imagine if Bill Clinton had been chirpy and chipper having just received the news of 31 soldiers dying in the theater of combat -- Rush Limbaugh would have devoted three hours to it, and Fox News would have dragged Dick Morris out of the all-you-can-eat buffet for his 'expert analysis.' " <snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44390-2005Jan28.html