May 31, 2009

La plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose


8:00 am, Oval Office, Monday, June 1:

Prez O enters through side door.  Robert Gibbs, Press Secretary and Rahm Emmanuel, Chief of Staff sit on sofa waiting. They rise to greet the President.  O bumps fists with both, slaps palms, then bumps elbows.  The two white guys, still getting familiar with routine, consume about 30 seconds of meeting with ritual.

O (sitting down):  What up, Bobby?
Gibbs:  General Motors is going under today.
O:  Bummer.  On my watch.  How does this play, Rahm?
Rahm:  We've positioned it well.  It's a penny stock now, everyone expected it.  Getting Soto nominated late last week was a stroke.  We've had 24/7 cycle on that one while the Republican nut jobs went nuclear on her, so no one will notice when a couple hundred thousand more guys are thrown out of work.
O:  Cool.  The timing worked.
Gibbs:  Sure did.  High five!
O:  We don't do that one anymore, Bobby.
Gibbs:  Right.  Yeah, it was Sonia from the jump, but holding off till you needed her played well. 90% of the questions have been about Sotomayor's racism.  Who gives a shit about General Motors or Kim's A-bomb?

(chuckles all around)

Rahm:  It's almost too easy sometimes.  I'm starting to see how even Bush could pull this off.
Gibbs:  Candy from a baby.
Rahm:  Weird, though.  Where we're taking on water is this date night thing, the trip to New York.
O:  I was worried about that.
Rahm:  It's not playing.
O:  I promised Michelle during the campaign.
Rahm:  Big whoop, is how Peoria sees that one. 
Gibbs:  I'll need my catcher's mask this morning.
O:  You know how many times Bush took that 747 to Crawford?  How much that cost?
Rahm:  Right.  It's a talking point.  
Gibbs:  Where we're vulnerable is we used to talk about "change."
O:  We saw an ethnic play, man.
Rahm:  Which is good.  Bush would have gone in for a remount of "My Fair Lady."
Gibbs:  The Gulfstream is better than Air Force One, but it's got that odor of Wall Street around it.
O:  Were we supposed to drive to New York?
Rahm:  Thing is, you're supposed to be big on global warming.
O:  And?
Gibbs:  It's discretionary flying.  Of kind of the most self-indulgent type.  Entourage, special trip instead of when you're going to the U.N. or something.
O:  Shit.  Where we were these comments on Friday?
Rahm:  Plus, you know - the country's kind of out of work.  Your man Geithner is fighting tooth and nail to defend the Wall Street exec lifestyle, and then you join in.
Gibbs:  The optics are off.
O:  One frigging date night...
Rahm:  We need a flak-catching strategy.
O:  I"m not giving a Rev Jeremiah speech.  Forget it.
Rahm:  Doesn't call for that.
Gibbs:  I'm going to get a lot of Q&A on the cost of this thing.
O:  What's the play on that?
Gibbs:  Better not to say. That's our line so far.
Rahm:  Of course, there's the transparency thing.
Gibbs:  They're starting to say we're transparent about being opaque.
O:  Do I apologize?
Gibbs:  That looks weak, especially because it will make it look like you're apologizing for fulfilling a promise.
O:  Well, hell...
Rahm:  It's a box canyon.  You'd be apologizing for poor judgment.
O:  The idea was the date night thing was good PR.  Where'd we go wrong?
Gibbs:  I think we got cross-ways on our images, that's all.  Self-indulgent power broker versus family man in love with his wife.  We played into a trap.
O:  Just soldier through, Bobby. Get on their case about not asking about the A-bomb.  Or GM.
Rahm:  That's the stuff, Barry.  You're getting the hang of this now.

(meeting concludes)


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