The Post Pours Some Sugar on Gary Cohn
I heard some of this crap yesterday-actually lots of it!
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AP Photo
The Post Pours Some Sugar on Gary Cohn
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/gary-cohn-trump-washington-post-media-215027
Trump’s economic adviser is faster than a speeding bullet and can leap tall buildings in a single bound, we’re told.
By Jack Shafer
April 14, 2017
Washington journalists who covet places aside the thrones of power will happily season their copy to ingratiate themselves to the powerful. Known inside the trade as “beat sweeteners” or “source greasers,” such praiseful articles lavish flattery upon officials in hopes that the subject will come to trust the reporter and return the favor in the future by leaking inside skinny or providing other access.
Sweetening the beat this week is Damian Paletta of the Washington Post, who pours so much steaming hot journalistic honey all over Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, the tableau resembles that sexy Ohio Players album cover from the 1970s. The Post calls Cohn an “unlikely player” who is “exercising new influence on the direction of President Trump’s administration.” The secret to his sway? He’s a moderate aligned with other White House moderates, including Prince Jared and Dina Powell, the deputy national security adviser for strategy (who received a mini-beat sweetener of her own this week), in pushing “a centrist vision” and courting “bipartisan support” against the evil forces of Bannonism.
Conservative press critics can’t shut up about liberal media bias, but for my money the enduring bias in the Washington press is for moderation, centrism and bipartisanship. If a politician or policymaker signals a willingness to make deals in Washington—no matter what the deal—the press will treat him like a wise and worldly figure. “People who have met with Cohn in his new role said they weren’t aware of what his ideology was,” Paletta notes. Has no ideology? Or camouflages it? Pick one. As long as a Washington figure camouflages his policies in neutral colors, he can expect reporters to lap treats directly from his hand.
The lead Wall Street Journal editorial in Friday’s edition pegs Cohn—accurately, I think—as a “pragmatic Wall Street Democrat” who is deficient in the “vocabulary of free-market conservatives.” In other words, he’s very Trumpy. Today, he’s reaping praise from centrist-lovers for having changed Baby Donald’s economic course to the usual Washington route. How long that will hold is anybody’s guess. It’s worth pointing out that the Journal credits Cohn with having built an “impressive team,” which is the page’s way of saying “conservative.” Even should Bannon leave, the conservative policy voice would still sound in the administration, the page concludes—a polite way of saying the White House’s chief strategist won’t be missed...........................
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