Impossible to Appease: Lauer Suggests Card Left Too . . . Soon!

March 29th, 2006 7:28 AM

A quick take on a morning when I'm headed to Washington, DC.

Sometimes, you just can't win with the MSM.  For weeks, the MSM has been calling for a White House shake-up.  So when it came in spades yesterday with the resignation of chief of staff Andy . . . Card [spades, Card.  Come on, tough room here!], naturally the media applauded the bold move.

Or not.  Veteran NewsBusters readers know better.  There is no appeasing the liberal media.  They recalibrate their line of attack and move on.  But who could have predicted the tack Matt Lauer would have taken in interviewing good-soldier Mary Matalin on this morning's Today show?  Lauer suggested, of all things, that Card left . . . too soon!

Said Lauer: "if he [stayed in the] job until September he would become the longest-serving chief of staff in history. That's a feather in someone's cap. Why would he leave now?"

Oh, to be sure, in the set-up piece David Gregory suggested that Card was "the symbol of a tired, burned out team that had lost its edge," and Today played a clip of Chuck Schumer's utterly predictable "deck chairs on the Titanic" gibe.  Lauer threw that in Mary's face, along with the dismissive suggestion that Card's replacement Josh Bolten isn't really new blood because he's already serving elsewhere in the administration, as OMB Director.

But Lauer also, incredibly, suggested that perhaps Card had left too soon since, if only he'd stayed on a few months longer, he'd have been the longest-serving chief of staff in White House history.

I'm telling you, folks, when it comes to the MSM, sometimes you just can't win!

Finkelstein lives in Ithaca, NY, where he hosts the award-winning public-access TV show 'Right Angle'. Contact him at: mark@gunhill.net