You've got the wrong target in your sights

Radley Balko wants to get rid of the position of White House press secretary:

Yet we pay this person well into six figures of taxpayer money . . . for what, exactly? This person is supposed to be the liaison between the White House and the press. And we’re now to the point where stonewalling, obfuscating, spinning, parsing, and generally preventing the flow of truthful information are accepted and acknowledged parts of the job description (standard disclaimer about these things also being endemic to politics itself notwithstanding).

I can't get particularly outraged; after all, just think how much more we're paying our politicians to lie to us, insult our intelligence, and waste billions of tax dollars. The White House press secretary seems like a comparative bargain.

Comments

I'd say that a hostile press is at least as responsible for poor quality news that we get from the mainstream media. I wouldn't want to tell our media anything if I were President, especially if I were a Republican (given the overwhelming majority of the press who are Democrats).

Posted by Earnest Iconoclast | March 25, 2008 9:50 AM

Putting aside Megan's snark, there have been a few good ones.

...It occurs to me that if a President was forced to do their own interface with the media to any appreciable degree, it would become impossible for them to do the actual job.

IMO, the reason it's easy to get snarky lately is because the sitting President openly and frequently flouts his disregard for the intent of the responsibilities that go with his title.

Posted by ben | March 25, 2008 4:57 PM