Is Robert Gibbs Getting Bored Of Being Press Secretary?
The conclusion a number of people appear to be drawing from today’s longish WaPo profile on Robert Gibbs (now that the media has grown bored of Rahm Emanuel perhaps Gibbs is the next target) is that Gibbs has his eye on a bigger role than the one he currently fills, namely White House strategist.
Gibbs is too discreet to say which job he prefers, but it’s not hard to figure out. Listen to the press secretary talk about the media as a predictable, hyperventilating rabble obsessed with access and covering “everything as make or break,” or observe his frustration percolating in the briefing room. Then ask him whether he has improved as a big-picture strategist, and the administration’s leading purveyor of evasive, circuitous sentences suddenly speaks to the point.
“Oh, absolutely!” Gibbs said.
Of course, read on in the profile and it sounds like Gibbs already occupies this position for the most part. Says Anita Dunn, “Robert is far more of a strategist and plays more of a strategic role than people realize.” The problem apparently is he’s too good at his Press Sec. job to move on…at least that’s the feeling in the White House. The White House Press Corp. is apparently less than rosy-eyed over Gibbs.
There are a few things about Gibbs that irritate even the least excitable reporters in the briefing room, though none of them would speak for the record out of fear of retaliation. One reporter expressed frustration with the way Gibbs has compared reporters — and even Sen. John McCain — to his 6-year-old son because he didn’t approve of the way they were behaving. “He uses him as a prop,” the reporter said. Unlike press secretaries past, who would make rounds of calls to reporters as they neared deadlines, Gibbs is notoriously tough to get on the phone. His soliloquies are full of “first and foremost” and “I will say this,” and he relies on escape-hatch promises to “check and get back to you.” This month, Gibbs neglected to tell reporters traveling back from Prague on Air Force One that Justice John Paul Stevens had announced his retirement and refused to talk to them when they found out. Last weekend, Obama broke longstanding tradition by giving the slip to a pool reporter. Later this month, representatives of various news organizations will meet with Gibbs to express what they feel is the administration’s contempt for the press.
Also, he’s on Twitter, making an end run much easier. Chip Reid touched on a number of similar points in an interview he did with us in February. However, I wondered whether every White House Press Corp. had similar complaints about every other Press Sec. so I asked our own White House correspondent Tommy Christopher to weigh in:
Of reporters that I’ve interviewed who have experienced more than one press secretary, my sense is less. Personally, he’s well-liked, but there’s some of dissatisfaction with the way he answers questions, the fact that he knows more than most other press secretaries, and the way he runs the briefings. More than all of that, though, there’s a lot of frustration at the way the press office manages the press.
It’ll be interesting to see whether this shifts at all when Gibbs (inevitably, it seems) shifts into the “inside” likely sometime next year.
