Maureen Dowd's "No Love From the Lefties": Shoot the Messenger!

In an op-ed in today's New York Times entitled "No Love From the Lefties" (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/opinion/15dowd.html?hp), addressing the White House press secretary's temper tantrum directed at the "professional left" which no longer bows before the president, Maureen Dowd begins by observing,

"Robert Gibbs should be yanked as White House press secretary,"

and concludes by stating,

"Let someone who shows less disdain for the press work with the press, and be the more engaging face of the White House."

Dowd contends that Gibbs has created a "moat" between the press and the presidency, but fails to comprehend that Gibbs is no more than the messenger, chosen to stymie discourse with news correspondents.

Listen to Anita Dunn, Obama's former Communications Director ("yanked" when she declared that mass murderer Mao Tse-Tung is one of her favorite political philosophers) explain how during the presidential campaign "very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn’t absolutely control." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlGNhAnwp_Y)

The Obama West Wing has yet to grasp that whereas "absolute control" may have worked during the campaign when voters were flush with idealism, faith and hope, it no longer works two years later in an atmosphere of disillusionment, doubt and despair.

It has yet to occur to Axelrod & Co. that Obama needs to hold more frequent news conferences and agree to unscripted Q&A without teleprompters. The concern, of course, is that many more might discover "the king has no clothes."

[Those "professional lefties" at The New York Times refused to post an abbreviated version of this blog item that I submitted as an online comment in response to Dowd's op-ed. It would appear that they also don't enjoy having the opinions of their distinguished columnists being questioned by the hoi poloi.]