Obama limiting press access in ways past presidents ‘wouldn’t have dared’

 

The Associated Press has put together a report that concludes about President Obama what most of us already suspected – this is hardly the most transparent administration in history, which Obama famously promised at the start of his first term.

The AP’s Nancy Benac summarizes the White House’s obsessive approach toward producing photos, videos and tweets that portray the president and First Family in the best possible light.

“At the same time,” Benac wrote, “it is limiting press access in ways that past administrations wouldn't have dared, and the president is answering to the public in more controlled settings than his predecessors. It's raising new questions about what's lost when the White House tries to make an end run around the media, functioning, in effect, as its own news agency.”

The White House press corps’ growing irritation with Obama ratcheted up when the White House recently live-streamed on the Internet Obama's meeting with his export council and allowed just one reporter in the room.

Statistics compiled by Martha Kumar, a political science professor at Towson University in Maryland who studies presidential communication, show how Obama's strategy has differed from his predecessors'.

In his first term, Obama engaged in 107 short question-and-answer sessions with reporters during events in the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room and similar settings. President George W. Bush, by contrast, had 354.

By the same token, though, Obama held twice as many solo press conferences as Bush: 36 compared to 17. And in the first term Obama did 674 interviews -- TV, radio, Internet, print -- compared to 217 for Bush and 191 for Bill Clinton.

Here’s Benac again:

“With interviews, the president has more power to choose his timing, questioners and format, in hopes of delivering a certain message in a setting that's not always hard-hitting. In impromptu Q-and-A's, the questions fly about anything and everything from the national press corps -- and these wide-open opportunities to challenge the president on the events of the day have become increasingly rare.”

Great line about gay marriage flip-flops

Great line on Twitter by Jonathan Martin of Politico:

“If only we could get a gay marriage statement in which a pol says they searched their conscience and their crosstabs.”

Btw: You know it’s a slow news day in the political arena when Politico includes in its top-of-the-page “HOT TOPICS” the Easter egg roll at the White House on Monday.

One less voice in the world of Michigan politics

Michigan politics has lost another voice.

Susan Demas of MLive (an aggressive online competitor for all Michigan newspapers) will no longer write a column for the website. She will continue as a MIRS reporter at the state Capitol, but apparently her boss has told her to keep her opinions to herself.

As someone who writes an opinion column and news stories, I can say from (lots of) experience that a journalist can handle both duties admirably. For some reason, too many editors find the duality of a columnist/reporter a natural fit in the Sport Department, but not in the world of news.  Columnist/reporter was a position that served as the heart of newspaper journalism decades ago. Now, in Michigan, there’s only a few of us left.

At a time when Lansing is thoroughly dominated by pro-business Republican politics and policies, Demas was often the voice for the worker who struggles from one paycheck to the next, or works two jobs to earn the equivalent of one decent paycheck. She served as a thorn in the side of GOP lawmakers, and she frequently jabbed centrist Democrats too.

A contributor to several media outlets, Demas may have come across as too liberal for many readers, but she is honest and witty and snarky. Great combination for a columnist.

But I guess combinations are not allowed in this new journalism age.

After six years, her final column was posted on March 28. You can read it here.

Tea party hypocrites hand out huge bonuses in House

This one should make the tea partiers hoppin’ mad.

According to Legistorm.com, two of the most prominent tea party congressional candidates who lost in 2012, Todd Akin and Allen West, dished out huge bonuses to their staffers before heading out the door. Akin topped the House list for average salary paid in 2012, at $121,000.

Though Akin and West in the House routinely called for substantial cuts in federal spending, particularly cutbacks in programs for the poor, they both found it reasonable to double the pay for their staffs. Akin and West were also among those who downplayed the impact of the sequester cuts and the subsequent furloughs -- 20 percent pay cuts that will be suffered by federal workers over a 22-week period.

Legistorm found that Akin, who famously lost a Senate race to Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill, ranked No. 2 on the list of bonus payouts, increasing his staff’s pay by 98.3 percent after he became a lame duck lawmaker.

West, who lost his south Florida seat by a tiny margin, was at No. 4, with an 88.3 percent hike in pay.

In fact, among the Top 10, nine were Republicans. The No. 1 distributor of  big, fat bonuses was Democratic congressman Gary Ackerman, who retired at the end of 2012. But Ackerman was always considered an old-fashioned, big-government liberal.

In contrast, congressman Chip Cravaack of Minnesota spent the past two years following the tea party playbook. But when end-of-the-year bonuses were paid out, Cravaack relied upon tax dollars to award 93.3 percent pay raises. That put him at No. 3.

House staffers typically get bonuses at the end of the year depending on how much is left in the office budget, but on average in 2012 those raises were “just” 16.4 percent for Republicans and 15.1 percent for Democrats.

  

Is immigration the one issue that cracks the code of gridlock?

Amazingly, it appears that immigration reform is one issue where compromise is likely in Washington, thanks to the bipartisan, out-of-the-spotlight work accomplished by the so-called “Gang of Eight” in the Senate.

Of course, this sudden cooperation has more to do with winning elections than creating solid public policy. The Republicans, who previously talked about deporting 10 million illegal immigrants and joked about building an electrified fence at the border, now realize that they have a serious problem attracting Hispanic votes.

After some basic calculations centered on future demographic trends, they’ve decided that pulling a major flip-flop on the immigration issue and wooing Hispanic voters is good politics.

Beyond Capitol Hill, the AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce came to an agreement on the key sticking point of how to handle guest workers.

The number of guest-worker visas will begin at 20,000 and rise, within five years, to 75,000. According to The Washington Post, the future number can vary between 20,000 and 200,000 based on a formula that takes several economic factors into account.

Ezra Klein of the Post calls the deal “a classic political compromise” because it splits the difference between the chamber’s interest in more guest workers and labor’s interest in keeping wages high. Split-the-difference compromises are available but rarely taken because, in Washington, the two sides don’t actually want a compromise.

Here’s how Klein sums things up on his Wonkbook blog:

“Bipartisanship is, unusually, a precious political resource that the minority party has exclusive control over. It is entirely in their power to make even an accommodating president look like a polarizing figure who’s unable to work constructively with the minority party. And more to the point, it’s entirely in their interest.

“Elections really are zero-sum affairs. For one party to win, the other has to lose. The incentives this creates are stunningly dysfunctional. Imagine a workplace where the only way to win a promotion was for the boss to fire your colleague. Even worse, if he likes your colleague’s work, you get a pay cut. Now imagine that your colleague needs your help to finish a big, difficult project. Think you’re going to help him?

“This is why Washington is bitterly polarized place. The rules of politics are designed such that it’s not in the interest of the minority party to work with the majority party. There are moments when countervailing forces — be they public opinion or policy desires — can overcome the basic zero-sum nature of politics. But they’re increasingly rare.

“Immigration reform, however, sits at the center of an unusual convergence of forces that have made it positive-sum politics. Democrats believe in the policy, but they also believe that it’s good — even essential — politics to deliver on the number-one priority of the growing Hispanic electorate. Many Republicans also believe in the policy, and almost all Republicans believe that if their party is to prosper, they need to agree to immigration reform to show Hispanic voters that the GOP isn’t hostile to their interests.”