White House vs Woodward: Mission Accomplished

There is a lot of sig­nif­i­cance to the White­House vs Wood­ward fight. We get one aspect of it from the Anchoress:

I looked at some of the polit­i­cal head­lines, par­tic­u­larly that stag­ger­ing busi­ness of medi­afolk eat­ing their own to pro­tect their pres­i­den­tial squeeze-​toy, and won­dered, what the his­tory books would say about yes­ter­day, too. Would they say this was the moment the U.S. Press vacated its right to a pub­lic trust, by dis­al­low­ing any chal­lenges to (or demands of account­abil­ity from) a pres­i­den­tial administration?

A friend replied: “No one will remem­ber what hap­pened in Amer­ica today…” And that is prob­a­bly right. But watch­ing the on-​going goings-​on among the main­stream jour­nal­ists, I won­dered if we ought not mark the day of the Wood­ward take-​down as we were mark­ing Benedict’s. Per­haps yes­ter­day was a day when but­ter­flies flapped their wings, and fomented dis­tant calamities.

Cer­tainly the blow­black from the MSM against Wood­ward who had hith­erto been treated as a demigod is not insignif­i­cant. There is no short­age of irony in the pres­i­dent pro­claim­ing “I am not a dic­ta­tor” at the end of the week when the White House cry was seem­ingly: ” “Will no one rid me of this tur­bu­lent reporter?”

While the Wood­ward affair might have a long term sig­nif­i­cance, either in terms of mark­ing the day the press turns around or the day the press finally sur­ren­ders itself in sub­mis­sion there is one other aspect of the Wood­ward story that serves the long term goals of the pres­i­dent no mat­ter how it ends.

Yes­ter­day I wrote how the White House was going to play sequestration:

No Jobs? Sequestration’s fault. Peo­ple can’t afford a house or car? Sequestration’s fault. Food­stamps on the rise? Seques­tra­tion. Long lines at an air­port? Seques­tra­tion! Poor Edu­ca­tion? Seques­tra­tion! Crime? Seques­tra­tion! Stu­dent Loans? Seques­tra­tion. Al Qaeda attacks? Seques­tra­tion! Iran­ian Bomb? Seques­tra­tion in Spades!

The entire busi­ness is vague enough that the White House can use this argu­ment to explain away almost any­thing. It doesn’t have to work for­ever, just long enough to deflect the blame when the low infor­ma­tion voter catches a sound bite here and there.

You might think the Wood­ward busi­ness, draw­ing so many sto­ries and posts might destroy that plan, on the con­trary, it serves it.

Remem­ber this all started with a Feb­ru­ary 22^nd Op ed by Wood­ward call­ing atten­tion to the fact the White House is where seques­tra­tion came from:

The pres­i­dent and Lew had this wrong. My exten­sive report­ing for my book “The Price of Pol­i­tics” shows that the auto­matic spend­ing cuts were ini­ti­ated by the White House and were the brain­child of Lew and White House con­gres­sional rela­tions chief Rob Nabors — prob­a­bly the fore­most experts on bud­get issues in the senior ranks of the fed­eral government.

Obama per­son­ally approved of the plan for Lew and Nabors to pro­pose the sequester to Sen­ate Major­ity Leader Harry Reid (D-​Nev.). They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011, accord­ing to inter­views with two senior White House aides who were directly involved.

That was a bomb­shell that exploded on the press and the White House and had excel­lent poten­tial to derail any hopes of blam­ing Seques­tra­tion (and through it the GOP) for any prob­lem that might arise.

How­ever The wood­ward fight has changed the nar­ra­tive, look at these meme­o­randm head­lines from Thurs­day and Friday

Dylan Byers /​Politico:Press corps to Wood­ward: Really?

Paul Farhi /​Wash­ing­ton Post: Wood­ward vs. White House: Wash­ing­ton at its weirdest

Politico:Wood­ward at war

Ron Fournier /​Nation​alJour​nal​.com: Why Bob Woodward’s Fight With The White House Mat­ters to You

Ben Smith /​Buz­zFeed: Eco­nomic Offi­cial Sper­ling Warned Woodward

WMAL: WMAL EXCLU­SIVE: Woodward’s Not Alone — Fmr. Clin­ton Aide Davis Says He Received White House Threat

BRE​IT​BART​.COM: LANNY DAVIS: OBAMA WHITE HOUSE THREAT­ENED WASH­ING­TON TIMES OVER MY COLUMN

CNN: Bob Wood­ward says he was threat­ened by White House

Brett LoGiu­rato /​Busi­ness Insider: BOB WOOD­WARD: A ‘Very Senior’ White House Per­son Warned Me I’d ‘Regret’ What I’m Doing

All are big, all are loud and not a sin­gle one of them says: “White House source of Sequestration”.

As long as that nar­ra­tive is not the story, the White House wins, Wood­ward called the White House out con­cern­ing this on Today:

“It’s been pointed out that this is a sideshow, which it is,” the Wash­ing­ton Post jour­nal­ist told Matt Lauer on TODAY from Wash­ing­ton. “This is the old trick in the book of mak­ing the press, or some con­fronta­tion with the press, the issue, rather than what the White House has done here.”

Why cover the issue when the dog­fight is more interesting?

“The pres­i­dent is run­ning around the coun­try say­ing it’s going to bring a human toll, that all sorts of peo­ple are going to lose their jobs,” Wood­ward told Lauer. “He’s the one who started it. He’s the one he pro­posed it. Peo­ple need to know that, and that’s what the White House is try­ing to avoid dis­cus­sion about, quite frankly.”

In six months every­one will remem­ber the White House had a con­fronta­tion with Bob Wood­ward. But none of the low infor­ma­tion vot­ers that this plan is directed toward will remem­ber what Wood­ward wrote that sparked it.

That result is all the White House is inter­ested in. If less pow­er­ful jour­nal­ists are dis­suaded from cross­ing them, that’s a bonus extra.

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It’s the last day of the pay week and despite one soul doing a monthly kick in we are still under 25% toward this week’s paycheck.

I’m sure it’s sequestration’s fault and DaTip­Jar has not been vis­ited by agents of Malaysia as some oth­ers have.

With No Soros, No Koch, No Unions, No Feds and No Malaysia It’s going to take you, I’m twelve $20 tip jar hit­ters from a full pay­check this week. Can I find a dirty dozen to keep the home fires burning?