Yesterday's Style page of the Washington Post devoted a gauzy piece by staffer Jason Horowitz to Obama's "data-driven guru" David Plouffe. Today, Horowitz's colleague Amy Gardner took her turn at Obama campaign puffery with her Style section front-pager, "
"Welcome to the 'Jen and Jay Show,' the latest iteration of the White House news briefing," Gardner opened her October 31 piece on the Air Force One press gaggles that Jen Psaki of the Obama campaign and White House press secretary Jay Carney conduct. "In the waning days of the campaign, the duo has given the briefings the feel of a vaudeville act: lighthearted and entertaining but also well rehearsed -- and deadly for Republican Mitt Romney." Gardner, ostensibly an objective journalist, oozed, going on to marvel at the showmanship of Psaki and Carney (emphases mine):
Straight man Carney, who is 47, a fluent Russian speaker and former Washington bureau chief for Time magazine, waxes serious about Syria or Libya — and then looks on with amusement while Psaki plays the double role of girl-next-door and tart-tongued attack dog.
Asked recently to comment on Romney’s accusation that Obama would lie during the debates, Psaki said: “If Mitt Romney were Pinocchio, his nose would be reaching from Virginia to Ohio with the number of lies he’s told.”
A reporter even asked Carney if he was starting to feel like a bystander now that fewer questions were aimed at him. “Not at all,” Carney offered cautiously. “I enjoy listening to my colleague field your questions. It’s most comforting.”
In some ways, the Jen and Jay Show reflects the small-bore tone of the 2012 election. Obama isn’t so much promising hope or change this year; he’s asking for more time — and relentlessly tearing down Romney so he doesn’t look like a better choice. Alongside Carney’s policy-oriented spiels about the European debt crisis or the unemployment rate, Psaki spends much of her time going after Romney: scoffing at him, needling him, mocking him. She is the traveling hit woman of the Obama campaign.
It's hard to imagine a reporter writing such a warm, reverential feature about the communications operation for a Republican president's reelection campaign, particularly if said Republican had handled the Benghazi fiasco the same press-avoiding, stonewalling way that the Obama team is.
Journalists are supposed to not fall in love with the candidates they cover, the criticism would be, and rightly so.
But nope, Gardner seems unconcerned with her unseemly giddiness over Psaki's handling of the press, going on to cite other examples of what she considered clever swipes by Psaki against the Republican opponent Gov. Romney:
Commenting on Romney’s summer trip abroad, during which he was jeered by the British press for criticizing security preparations for the Olympics, she offered: “The only person who has offended Europe more is probably Chevy Chase.”
And about PBS’s request that Obama take down an ad featuring Big Bird — in response to Romney’s suggestion that he would cut federal funding for public broadcasting — she retorted: “It doesn’t change the fact that there’s only one candidate in this race who is going to continue to fight for Big Bird and Elmo, and he is riding on this plane.”
Psaki’s one-liners are sometimes downright weird, as when she channeled David Lynch about Romney’s “lack of ideas,” which reminded her of an empty pool with “dead leaves and trees in it.” And there was Carney again, chuckling with the reporters and observing:
“I endorse language as creative and descriptive as that used by my friend and colleague.”
It was at this point that Gardner added:
If Psaki’s style suggests a less consequential job than that of her traveling straight man, she is viewed widely as one of two top contenders to replace him, the other being Carney’s deputy, Josh Earnest. By several accounts, Carney has no plans to leave, nor is anyone pressuring him to do so. But the job of White House press secretary has a high burnout rate — and a lucrative landing pad in the private sector.
Psaki, who grew up in Connecticut and attended the College of William and Mary, is on leave from a Washington consulting firm. She has been moving in and around national politics for a decade, including stints with the Iowa Democratic Party and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and as deputy press secretary for Sen. John F. Kerry’s presidential bid in 2004. She began working for Obama in 2007, mastering the art of traveling press management and then spending two years in the weeds of domestic policy as deputy White House communications director.
At no point did Gardner pause to consider that Obama might, you know, lose his reelection bid, hence making the speculation of Carney's potential successor moot.
