The press corps sure is a whiny bunch. This week the White House Correspondents Association expressed “extreme frustration” about President Obama’s lack of “access” and “transparency.”
Memo to the Fourth Estate: The president won’t ignore you if you do your job instead of releasing statements.
Start with immigration reform: Over the weekend, the White House leaked a plan that seemed to undercut the delicate negotiations under way in Congress. Though the White House has since walked it back — even former Obama adviser David Axelrod calls it a “mistake” — the move suggests that Obama may be back to his old game of privately working to bring down a bill he publicly claims to support.
That’s what Sen. John McCain was alluding to on “Meet the Press” when he framed the issue this way: “Does the president really want a result or does he want another cudgel to beat up Republicans so he can gain advantage in the next election?” McCain should know. The last time Democrats and Republicans came together to pass a serious immigration bill was 2007 — and then-Sen. Obama helped kill it by supporting poison-pill amendments favored by Big Labor.
Here’s the danger today: If Republicans working with their Democratic counterparts conclude Obama will pull the same stunt this time, they’ll bolt.
Surely, this gap between Obama’s words and his actions on immigration is at least as compelling a story as the dissension in GOP ranks. But Obama gets a pass.
One example is the recent AP profile on Cecilia Munoz, the White House point person on immigration. The story mentions a framed note from Sen. Ted Kennedy that hangs on her wall. Written after the 2007 bill went down, it reads, “We didn’t complete the journey, but we’ll get there.”
Left unmentioned by AP is that one reason Kennedy didn’t complete that journey is the double-dealing by Munoz’s current boss, President Obama.
Alas, White House reporters have made clear they aren’t interested in asking tough questions of this president. And they wonder why he doesn’t take them seriously.