Obama, the press, and the "bipartisan" trap - media matters

[spanone]

by Eric Boehlert

I'm not sure how many thousands of questions have been asked over the years at White House press briefings, but I would suggest NBC's Chuck Todd may have recently asked one of the most inane.

The history-making moment unfolded in the White House press room on January 23, when the topic open for questioning was President Obama's proposed economic stimulus package and whether the administration, which was hoping for a bipartisan effort on the legislation, would be disappointed if the bill passed with little Republican support. And that's when Todd asked if Obama would veto his own bill if it didn't garner enough Republican votes.

It's hard to imagine that a reporter for an elite news outlet, operating at the pinnacle of his profession as a White House correspondent, would ever ask that question, would ask if a president would take the step of vetoing his own legislation because not enough politicians from the opposition party had voted in favor of it.

For anyone who understands the extraordinary amount of time, energy, and political capital that goes into passing any piece of legislation, let alone the historic, enormous, and urgently debated stimulus package, the idea that a president would reject legislation simply for theatrics -- simply to prove a PR point about the need for greater bipartisanship -- only highlights how unseriously Chuck Todd seems to take the legislative process. But more important, the entire point of the proposed stimulus package is to jump-start the economy right now. Why on earth would Obama veto his own legislation, thereby delaying the potential recovery?

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200902030004?f=h_top

[Horse with no Name]

1. Chuck Todd is a self-proclaimed analyst

I've never seen ANYTHING from him that remotely resembled decent or unbiased reporting.
I laughed my ass off during the primaries and his little charts and graphs of votes and shit and how desperately many clung to those daily numbers he pulled out of his ass. I doubt he could pass a Junior College statistics class--yet he was "THE AUTHORITY".:rofl:
He is a hack.
Nothing more--nothing less.
It's nice to see his true colors revealed.

[FrenchieCat]

2. I can think of hundreds of thousands of people who could do a better job

than that guy!

[SergeyDovlatov]

3. That is pretty inane question: would you veto your own bill?