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The Whoopee Cushion in the Situation Room
I’ve developed a somewhat morbid habit of late: every time I see a piece of absurdity in the news, I imagine it occupying half a sentence in some future historian’s tome about the decline of the United States. Surely this belongs in there somewhere. From Darren Samuelsohn at Politico:
Jon Stewart slipped unnoticed into the White House in the midst of the October 2011 budget fight, summoned to an Oval Office coffee with President Barack Obama that he jokingly told his escort felt like being called into the principal’s office.
In February 2014, Obama again requested Stewart make the trip from Manhattan to the White House, this time for a mid-morning visit hours before the president would go before television cameras to warn Russia that “there will be costs” if it made any further military intervention in Ukraine.
To engage privately with the president in his inner sanctum at two sensitive moments — previously unreported meetings that are listed in the White House visitor logs and confirmed to POLITICO by three former Obama aides — speaks volumes about Stewart and his reach, which goes well beyond the million or so viewers who tune into The Daily Show on most weeknights.
Maybe. And that’s probably the angle that a lot of the conservative media will take: “Look, Stewart’s been in bed with the Obama Administration all along.” But you don’t need a couple of White House visits to cement that fact. Jon Stewart’s an utterly conventional liberal either way. That’s not a story. Dog bites man.
The details actually speak volumes about Barack Obama. Ask anyone who’s ever been a White House staffer: on the scale of scarce resources, time on the presidential schedule is a little north of iridium. And yet, faced with one of the most severe national security challenges of his administration, witnessing the Russian “reset” turning to ash, staring down the barrel of a crisis that led serious people to begin wondering aloud whether Russia might have it within its power to break the back of NATO, Barack Obama cleared his schedule for a guy who had a supporting role in Death to Smoochy.
The next Edward Gibbon is going to have his hands full.
Published in Culture
This would be an excellent topic to discuss on a Ricochet After Dark podcast.
Why? Was Hillary in a negligee when Stuart showed up?
There’s an image I’m never getting out of my head.
Troy,
Sometimes he reminds you of the Manchurian Candidate. Sometimes he reminds you of a Hawaiian pot smoking surf bum. He never seems to remind you of a President of the United States.
Regards,
Jim
Did Stewart help with whole Iran nuclear deal? Or for something big like that did they call in Carrot Top?
More than anyone else, left or right, Jon Stewart sets the media talking points every 24 hours (typical headline everyday on my Facebook feed: “Watch Jon Stewart destroy insert Republican politician or position here!!”). If I were the White House, I’d keep him in my pocket as long as he was willing to stay there.
I predict Hillary Clinton is really going to miss Jon Stewart.
I can’t agree with Troy’s assessment.
Stewart is the filter through which Obama’s base sees the world. Politically, understanding what that filter is thinking and, potentially, getting him even more on your side is pretty astute.
Compared to the total botch most Republicans make of media relations, it’s been quite effective, if nothing else.
… assuming he goes away.
Better bet is that he pulls an Al Franken and she can appreciate him all the more.
The troubled monarch calls for his jester.
Many of my liberal friends are in an existential crisis trying to figure out which comedian they’re supposed to get their news from now.
Kind of a chiffon number and a little Channel #5 wafting in the air.
Sure. I get that. This is what every political operative in the White House was telling the president too.
All of which is important if you’re thinking tactically and defining a presidency by winning the news cycle. For your troubles, you’ll be rewarded with a 46 percent approval rating.
Or you could actually focus on doing the job given to you by the American people, which has the ancillary benefit of tending to carry approval ratings northward.
Maybe Obama’s theory of the case is right. Perhaps we really do live in a country where it’s now more important to win BuzzFeed than to win Crimea. If anything, though, I think that only reinforces my original thesis.
So many problems… so much trouble… I’m so burdened.
Make me laugh clown. Brighten my day. Do that thing where you stare all stone-faced and then raise just one brow.
That’s it! Ha Ha!! Now, begone, fool.
Back to the Island of Manhattan… until I need a grin again.
Fool.
Send Reggie in on your way out.
I really wish that was a joke. They’ll get their news from facebook. It’s a lot like John Stewart in that you only get the news you want. His show was highly edited, and on facebook, if you don’t like what’s being said, you unfriend.
Troy,
I think you’re looking at presidential policy through the wrong lens.
We all know that history takes sides. There’s the liberal side, and there’s the conservative side. But history decides. And history, as polls consistently show, is a prime-time TV audience.
I think of Stewart as being more analogous to Bubba’s interns… It’s just that Barry needs his ego stroked instead of his cigar.
I think it’s vital for a politician to do both. Let’s practice politics in the world we live in, not in the one we wish existed.
I think these two statements go hand-in-hand. Think about which people in this country actually elected Obama, and what they really expected him to do. Leaving aside the fact that I’d rather have Obama jotting down his golf score than signing an executive order, I’m not sure that being a celebrity president is really all that far off from what might legitimate be considered his mandate. Certainly, when he appeared on “between two ferns,” he was being the president that his voters wanted far more than if he had spent that time at camp David with Netanyahu. He wouldn’t be doing what American presidents are supposed to do, but it could be said that he was doing the job given to him by [those of the American people who voted for him].
Troy,
This is how Obama has been kicking our butts for 6.5 years. He wins nearly EVERY news cycle. By doing so, he’s been inexorably moving his agenda along. Just like in Football, 3.5 yards and a cloud of dust. Just enough to move the chains and march down the field.
He may have a 45% rating, but he had the same rating just before election day 2012. It was enough to get him 4 more years…
Read this column by Katrina vanden Heuvel. It will tell you all you need to know about how important Stewart was to the left over the past decade.
Nutshell.
Where the Right complained how Clinton managed his presidency by polls (thanks Dick Morris!), this President has successfully managed his administration by “likes” and “clicks”. Its all the same thing: shallow issues explained through memes. Useful idiots like Stewart (who is intelligent, but just wrong on so much) are starry eyed patsies who run when beckoned by dear leader.
Give them credit… the administration has turned squirrel-like distractions into fast food for the brain, which is a delicious, fattening and high caloric recipe momentarily satiating the country before it returns to watching Dancing with the Tards.
I think a few of these comments are overinterpreting my thesis. I don’t blame the Obama Administration for cultivating the Daily Show, YouTube celebrities, or whoever else they feel advances their message. It’s not especially dignified, but it’s a moot point anymore. The celebrity aspect of the presidency isn’t going away anytime soon.
Rather, my point is that it’s a terrible sign that, in a moment of legitimate crisis, they placed this high a priority on getting Jon Stewart into the Oval Office. That (alongside the hashtag diplomacy they were employing at the time), tells you that they were incapable of thinking of this as something other than a PR exercise.
This kind of WH thinking was brought home pretty clearly when it came out that Barry was dicking around playing cards while the Bin Laden raid was taking place, and only came in for the photo op at the end. He can’t be bothered with being presidential when the time actually calls for it.
Troy’s point is well taken and unfortunately not new. We just get frequent reminders of it, and the Daily Show piece is a fairly frightening example of it. What President slots a TV show host on the day he’s giving a major speech on a Russian invasion of another country?
Answer: Barrytime!
I think he learned from GW’s “mistake”–I put that in quotes because it wasn’t a mistake to me. But many people accused him of not better managing the politics of the Iraq War. (I often see signs of Obama’s learning how to lead from watching GW do it. Just my sense of Obama’s actions. GW was an effective leader. Obama knew a lot about politics but nothing about leadership when he took office.)
McPherson’s description of Lincoln’s genius included Lincoln’s ability to control the politics of the Civil War to the Union’s advantage.
So there is something to be said for the importance of working with the public, keeping them informed, and keeping them motivated.
That is good for the United States when the president’s policies are good. Not when he is selling out Israel to Iran.
What I’m trying to say is this: Obama has adopted the same determination to go forward that he saw in GW. Bush listened intently to people, but he always made up his own mind. Once he did, he proceeded. He did not let other people throw him off course.
I’m sorry to say that I see Obama doing the same thing. But he manages his relationships better with his Democratic Party supporters than GW did with his Republican supporters.
This has been Obama’s tactic from day one. He has done a lot this way. It will fifty years before we fully realize the extent of his actions while in office.
I don’t know about Stewart but I’m becoming quite certain The Long View is written from the future.
Follow it closely.
I agree with this 100%.
GW led the government fairly well. But he did a bad job of leading the American people.
It’s to be expected. He was the first (and so far the only) president with an MBA. So he was able to lead the organization that was his staff, and by extension the federal government, but he was way too far into being bipartisan. He obsessed about bringing a new tone to Washington.
Well, to be an effective president, sometimes you have to be bipartisan, but other times you have to be very partisan. The president also leads his political party, and is very much associated with it. Bush couldn’t strike that balance.
Stewart’s visit makes sense to me. From Obama’s point of view it does not matter how substantively stupid or disastrous a policy choice or action is so long as he continues to be perceived as hipper and cooler than all other politicians. Students will not protest, anchors will not raise an eyebrow during the broadcast, the WH press corps will not ask tough questions and the GOP will not dare to seriously challenge so long as that perception is intact.
Obama was always a narcissist. American voters and his ardent fans threw gasoline on that fire. Now we have a Fête de moi instead of presidential leadership and Obama can no longer tell the difference, if he ever could.
I don’t agree. Bush continued to surround himself with grownups with standing to disagree. Obama started with that (e.g., Panetta Clinton), largely ignored them and has eventually winnowed his circle to an echo chamber. Obama is not decisive so much as he is determined to impose a vision of himself and an ideology on a resistant reality.
Bush had a strong working relationship with Congress at the outset even though Daschle and Gephardt declared a pre-emptive war on him. He listened, compromised and moved what he needed to move. Obama has incredibly poor communications with Congress. He treats his own party as a rubber stamp. He got them slaughtered at every level of government in large part because of his hyper-partisan, top-down heavy handedness (see, Obamacare).
Bush was a drag on his party almost entirely for reasons of war weariness. Obama may have done more lasting damage to his party because of the breadth and scope of his policy failures.