Chuck Todd Named NBC Chief White House Correspondent

Chuck Todd, who once favorably compared Obama chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel to World War II heros Gens. Patton and MacArthur will soon be perched close to Field Marshal Rahm in the West Wing.

That's right, NBC News has named Todd as the new chief White House correspondent, replacing the outgoing David Gregory:

WASHINGTON - NBC News announced today that Political Director Chuck Todd has been named chief White House correspondent. Joining him on the beat will be Savannah Guthrie, who has been named White House correspondent. The announcements were made today by NBC News President Steve Capus, and are effective immediately.

"Chuck truly made his mark in the 2008 presidential election season where he offered unmatched political analysis. His objective, smart, real reporting has been honed through the years in Washington and makes him uniquely qualified to lead our White House coverage team," said Capus.

Speaking of David Gregory, Todd recently joined his predecessor in downplaying the severity of Gov. Rod Blagojevich's alleged abuses of office. As NewsBusters Associated Editor Noel Sheppard noted in his December 14 post:

The media defense of disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and corruption in politics continued Sunday morning as new "Meet the Press" host David Gregory, along with his guests, actually defended Blago's actions as "pay to play" business as usual that's just "part of the system" and "how the world works."

Such seems an astounding about face from the press's disgust and incessant focus on the so-called "Republican culture of corruption" that surrounded the reporting of former Republican Majority Leader Tom DeLay's travails in 2006, as well as the attention given to Jack Abramoff the same year in order to assist the Democrat takeover of both chambers of Congress that November.

Amazingly, two years later, the corruption in Illinois involving not only a Democrat governor, but also having some links to folks connected to the newly-elected Democrat president-elect, are just "part of the system" and "how the world works."

[...]

GREGORY: The president-elect said this is the far side of the business approach to politics which is a nice, euphemistic way to put this. But Chuck this is part of entrenched politics here in Washington, something that Obama is going to confront.

CHUCK TODD, NBC: It is. I mean, that is one of the things that Obama himself bragged about having so many small donors that maybe he wouldn't be caught having to just serve as the big (?). But you bring up a big point about Chuck Schumer. And you're going to have this huge roundtable discussion about the economy. What Wall Street happened, what happened in the financial situation? You look at what some of the contributions that Wall Street made, and there is a connection here. You wonder why legislation, why some things were overlooked or why Wall Street was allowed to do these credit default swaps. There are lines here of, you know, huge donations made to people that are in charge of these regulations. The Senate Banking Committee, and elected U.S. Senators.

You're darned right, Chuck. Like how about the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 which removed the last vestiges of the Depression Era Glass-Steagall Act? Maybe if this hadn't have been approved with overwhelming bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress, and signed into law by then President Clinton, our banks, brokerage firms, and insurance companies wouldn't have been allowed to behave the way they did the past nine years.

Or how about the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 which was also signed into law by Clinton and totally deregulated derivatives such as credit default swaps? Why didn't you bring any of this up this morning, Chuck, if you wanted to discuss the connection between the current financial crisis and political corruption?

As for Todd's reference to the Senate Banking Committee and elected U.S. Senators, mightn't this have been the perfect time to discuss how the current chairman of that committee, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), took more money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac since 1989 than any other member of Congress?