Bob Woodward: Yes, the sequester was totally the White House's idea

[DaShi]

Even legendary journalists need to take a crap every now and then.

[Tupac Shakur]

True. Maybe that's why Woodward took a crap all over the White House's bull**** messaging on sequestration.

[Sava]

True. Maybe that's why Woodward took a crap all over the White House's bull**** messaging on sequestration.

Obama seems to be winning this fight. The only thing Woodward crapped is himself.

Don't let wishful thinking cloud reality.

[DinoDoc]

Obama seems to be winning this fight.

Has the GOP caved again?

[Tupac Shakur]

Obama seems to be winning this fight. The only thing Woodward crapped is himself.

Don't let wishful thinking cloud reality.

Woodward is going to sell some extra books, while the White House just had to spend a couple news cycles pushing back against Woodward that it could've spent scaremongering about the likely impacts of the sequester and blaming it on the Republicans. Woodward 1 - 0 Obama.

[regexcellent]

The fact that the administration is implementing automatic spending cuts in ways which are deliberately designed to cause the most harm is obvious and well-observed, making the president's spin seem especially disingenuous. Obama's losing the fight here.

[Aeson]

The American people (in general) are losing the fight.

Obama (and D's leadership) and R's leadership are winning because it's just another issue in a long line of issues that can be used to keep their rabid sheep in line. News outlets are winning because it means all those rabid sheep keep refreshing pages of comments and clicking ads (though I don't know if they're winning more/less than they would with any other stupid story. If worst came to worst they could always pay off some Mexican bandits to kidnap a white girl over spring break.)

[DaShi]

True. Maybe that's why Woodward took a crap all over the White House's bull**** messaging on sequestration.

So you're hooking your car to the Woodward train like HC?

[DaShi]

I will admit that it is amusing watching you flail for ground after your troll was exposed on the first page. Even Oerdin got some good hits in.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Has the GOP caved again?

You know it will. It'll roll over and play dead faster than Beau. *woof* *wag*

[Tupac Shakur]

I will admit that it is amusing watching you flail for ground after your troll was exposed on the first page.

How could my troll be "exposed" when I made it obvious in the OP? I even openly baited Oerdin (it worked!).

[DaShi]

Keep up the good work then.

[Tupac Shakur]

Will do.

And yet Woodward is correct to single out the Obama White House for its excessive pugnacity. His exchange with Sperling may be a poor example of it, but there’s little argument that 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. has become a frat house for the thin-skinned and the foul-mouthed.

“As editor in chief of National Journal, I received several e-mails and telephone calls from [a] White House official filled with vulgarity, abusive language, and virtually the same phrase that Politico characterized as a veiled threat,” Ron Fournier, one of Washington’s best journalists, wrote in Woodward’s defense. “Once I moved back to daily reporting this year, the badgering intensified.”

I’ve received the same communications — and so has everybody else I know who has dealt with this White House. If this administration launched drone strikes at the rate Sperling and his colleagues launch F-bombs, there would be nobody left in Yemen.

This isn’t just a language issue (although it’s amusing to think of Obama aides’ *obscenity-laced e-mails going to the National Archives). It is a symptom of a White House in perpetual combat — with the media, with Republicans in Congress, with everybody — and dedicated to incremental point-scoring, without a view of the real goal.

The failure to reach a “grand bargain” on taxes and spending is typical. Woodward told Politico that he was perplexed Obama won’t “sit down and work through this” and produce the obvious compromise. “Color me a little baffled,” he said. “I don’t understand this White House. Do you?”

I do. And it’s a !&%@#$ shame.

With sequester, Washington as usual

[Tupac Shakur]

This is no tempest in a teapot but rather the leak in the dike. Drip by drip, the Obama administration has demonstrated its intolerance for dissent and its contempt for any who stray from the White House script. Yes, all administrations are sensitive to criticism, and all push back when such criticism is deemed unfair or inaccurate. But no president since Richard Nixon has demonstrated such overt contempt for the messenger. And, thanks to technological advances in social media, Obama has been able to bypass traditional watchdogs as no other president has.

More to the point, the Obama White House is, to put it politely, fudging as it tries to place the onus of the sequester on Congress. And, as has become customary, officials are using the Woodward spat to distract attention. As Woodward put it: “This is the old trick . . . of making the press . . . the issue, rather than what the White House has done here.”

Killing the messenger is a time-honored method of controlling the message, but we have already spilled that blood. And the First Amendment’s protection of a free press, the purpose of which is to check power and constrain government’s ability to dictate the lives of private citizens, was no accident.

Why the ‘threat’ on Bob Woodward matters

[DaShi]

I said good work.