Less than 24 hours after promising to “end the outsized influence of lobbyists” and “do our work openly,” Barack Obama’s White House began quietly inviting lobbyists to join in “a series of conference calls with senior Obama administration officials to discuss key aspects of the State of the Union address.”
The Hill, which publishes from offices on K Street, describes the invited participants as stakeholders, a characterization that raises the question of what are the people who aren’t invited. The Hill clearly intends the word to mean the paper’s K Street neighbors. A search of the White House web site indicates that the administration is a bit more catholic in its definition, but not all that much.
The invitation, which went to a variety of stakeholders, was sent by Fred Baldassaro, a senior adviser at the Treasury Department’s Office of Business Affairs and Public Liaison.
The invitation stated, “The White House is encouraging you to participate in these calls and will have a question and answer session at the end of each call. As a reminder, these calls are not intended for press purposes.”
I had very low expectations of the Obama administration, but one thing I thought they would be better at, given all the experienced hands on board, is managing their public image. Part of their problem is the nihilistic joy the press take in repeating unfiltered even the most brain-damaged GOP memes about Obama and his agenda, but a lot of it is tone-deaf stuff like this. Not only does it look bad to the naive souls who swallowed the transformational aspirations—about the best Obama supporters can say is “c’mon, everybody does it”—but it provides yet more ammunition to a Republican party whose sole purpose is to take potshots at the administration.
If you follow the news, the results of the calls and meetings between administration officials and lobbyists stakeholders should begin to surface in a few weeks as details about the legislative agenda the president described in his speech bubble up.
And speaking of stakeholders, the ones who own shares in Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke are rejoicing today upon news of his confirmation by a Senate many members of which seem largely to despise him. He may not be much interested in creating jobs, but at least we know that all the money not being earned (and spent) by the unemployed won’t be eroded by inflation.
You won’t remember but I chided you after the election regarding your cynical stance on Obama and his team.
I take it all back.
Au contraire; I always remember those occasions when I don’t get eaten by enormous prehistoric creatures. But you were far from alone and I always understood the impulse toward charity. I found it depressing because the outcome seemed so obvious to me, but in everyone else’s defense, other people who find a lack of belief in the obvious depressing include those who wear tinfoil hats to guard against government intrusions into their minds. Of course other people won’t believe it because they’ve already been gotten to.
Anyway, thanks, and thanks for the insights about life in Russia as well.