Press corps politicking gets silly

I have always known that reporter-types can be just as petty and political when it comes to office politics as anyone else in our society. The recently-completed battle for the seating chart in the White House briefing room is nothing more than evidence of how petty things can get.

That briefing room is the part of the White House press room where the press secretary (for Barack Obama, it is Robert Gibbs) holds regular briefings that are supposed to be about regular dispersal of information about what the president is doing – but sometimes can become the only chance one has to talk to anyone in anything resembling an official capacity about what is happening to the news.

THE BRIEFINGS ARE so heavily staged by the presidential staff, counting on the fact that a reporter or two who thinks he’s engaging in tough, combative questioning will get all worked up and prevent anyone else from asking significant questions.

Which means if the press secretary can effectively dodge that one reporter, he can get away with saying as little as possible.

All of this is to say that while I have never been a regular member of the White House press corps, I have participated in enough staged events to know that these briefings aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

Which is why I find it absurd to think that people were really fighting over who got to sit where in the 49 seats set up before a podium where Gibbs speaks on a regular basis to the press.

THOSE SEATS (SEVEN rows of seven seats each) are assigned to news organizations based on how large an audience they reach, which means every reporter is convinced that he (or she) must have as “prominent” a seat as possible – as evidence of how important his work is.

Hooey. While I understand that the closer one is to the press secretary (or the president himself) on those occasions when questions are being taken, the better it is that one will be called on, the quality of information that actually comes out of these briefings is so low that I wonder at times, “why bother?”

If anything, if I were a Washington correspondent, I’d probably want some sort of assignment that let me get out of the White House itself. Getting outside the building and rooting around the federal agencies that comprise the U.S. government is the best way to get stories.

Yet there are those who want to think their proximity to a president is their claim to fame. So we got serious fighting over who would get that front row, center seat – the one that is right in front of the podium.

WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS Association tradition always said it went to a wire service reporter with the most seniority – which was for many years Helen Thomas of United Press International. But when she left UPI in 2000 to go work for Hearst Newspapers as a columnist, she was allowed to keep that seat.

When she had to quit earlier this year on account of comments she made that appeared insensitive to the plight of Israelis (although anyone who had ever listened to Thomas, who is Lebanese, would know she has always had an interest in the concerns of Arabs), we got the infighting amongst the reporter-types, who want to say they’re now so important that their White House guy sits right in front of the president.

For the record, that prime seat goes back to the senior White House wire service reporter, which means the Associated Press now has someone sitting where Thomas once did (a thought that makes the old Unipresser in me want to wretch).

After some juggling around, Fox News Channel now gets a front row seat, making them equal to Cable News Network, and the three traditional television networks, ABC, CBS and NBC (the British wire service Reuters got the seventh and final front row seat).

IN READING ALL the sniping that has been taking place between Fox and Bloomberg Business News (the other outfit that thought they were entitled to a front-row seat), and even a bit from people on behalf of National Public Radio, I couldn’t help but be embarrassed.

It’s not like it’s going to matter much who sits where, for these briefings are conducted in such a fashion that the government officials (not just Obama, but every president before him) can say as little as possible.

Make it out so that each routine statement becomes an “event” in and of itself, and there’s a chance that the television cameras will pick up on it just because there is video of a presidential press secretary talking. It winds up pressuring everybody else into going along.

I can’t think anybody in the real world seriously cares, although I was amused by a few Internet commenters who seem to think the correspondents association should not have any say in who sits where in the White House – that this should somehow be a government decision.

THE LOGIC ALWAYS was that the government allocated a certain amount of space to the reporters, then let the reporters themselves figure out who occupies which cubbyhole and who sits where during the press briefings. I’d really hate to think that a president would get involved in something like this. So now we have the pompous boasts of Fox News that they’re a front-row organization, with Fox critics pleased they didn’t get the prime seat in front of the White House press secretary.

And for the record, the Tribune Co. (Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times) gets a third-row seat, second seat from the right – behind the New York Times, but ahead of the Washington Times, the Boston Globe and the Dallas Morning News, to name a few.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Sun-Times is placed in the fifth row at the far right, sitting behind Congress Daily and next to Fox Radio, but in front of the Dow Jones newswire.

Don’t you feel better informed knowing that?

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Will Blagojevich take down Jackson?

I don’t know what to make of the candidacy of Cheryle Jackson for the U.S. Senate. About the only thing I do know is that I think the people who want to dismiss her because she has the “Blagojevich” label on her are being a bit ridiculous.

For the record, Jackson in recent years has been head of the Chicago Urban League. Because she is of a younger generation and once worked in the corporate world (Ameritech, for those who want to know), her focus on improving the quality of urban life has been less on social issues and more on economic development.

GET THEM JOBS, and their lives will improve. It’s a sound theory.

Combined with the fact that she will be a black woman running in the race (be honest, race still factors into the electoral equation), it means her candidacy will stand out – even though state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias would like to think he already has the Democratic Party’s nomination sewn up.

If she can find sources of campaign money, she could also feed into the African-American vote on the South and West sides that can be strong when it comes out in force.

She could be a contender, particularly if it looks like Todd Stroger will not be able to get the Democratic nomination for another term as Cook County Board president. There’s a good chance that Jackson could be the most credible African-American candidate seeking electoral office in Illinois in 2010.

BUT WHAT SOME people want to believe holds her back is the fact that in between Ameritech and the Urban League, she worked for Illinois state government.

Specifically, she was on the staff of the Illinois governor. For a couple of years, she was Rod Blagojevich’s press secretary/communications director/flack/public mouthpiece/whatever you want to call it.

What it means is that for a couple of years, when reporter-types had questions of the governor, they called Jackson. When TV types needed a quick answer to a question on camera, Jackson would often do the interview.

While one can argue that the press secretary is nowhere near as important as the chief of staff and his top-ranking aides in terms of setting public policy, the press secretary often becomes the face of that policy.

JACKSON WAS THE person that people saw explaining why her boss did things the way he did.

Will some people refuse to cast a vote for anyone who does not vilify Blagojevich to the same level of hatred that they do? Possibly.

But it strikes me as being ridiculous, and not just because Jackson quit that job several yeas ago to take the Urban League post. To my knowledge, none of the allegations of illegal activity have seen her name come up.

Her successors in the post have had to deal with federal investigators, mainly because it appears the activity the feds are trying to prove is criminal in nature occurred in the later years of Blagojevich’s six-year stint as Illinois governor.

BESIDES, AS I wrote earlier in this commentary, there is something of a divide between the press secretary position and the actual government official.

Some press secretaries manage to bridge that gap. Take Earl Bush, who spoke for Richard J. Daley for some 20 years. If you need a more recent example, there is Mike Lawrence, who was a press secretary for Jim Edgar – latching onto him when he was Secretary of State, then rising up with him when Edgar became governor.

Those are examples of people who develop a close enough relationship to impact public policy.

But in many ways, they also are the exception.

FOR ALL TOO often, I have seen my reporter-type colleagues leave a news job (because the pay stinks or they want to quit before getting laid off) to become a government press secretary for a year or two.

Then, they wind up on some corporate payroll doing public relations, or perhaps they turn themselves into “media consultants” who take on contracts to work for various entities – on the theory that a little bit of money from a lot of people can add up to a nice income.

These aren’t exactly the types of people who are going to have such a close tie to a politician that it can accurately be said they influenced the direction of public policy.

That is roughly the category I think Jackson fits into.

I’M NOT PREPARED to demonize every single person who ever came into contact with Rod Blagojevich. If I did, I’d have to include myself, since I remember covering him back in the mid-1990s when he was still in the state Legislature (and no one had ever heard of Barack Obama).

If anything, I want to demonize the people who are eager to use the “Blagojevich” label on every occasion possible. Many of us are tired of hearing about the man, and would like to hear nothing more until his actual trial in U.S. District Court takes place next year.

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Don’t look at me; I don’t want the job

Learning this week that Gov. Rod Blagojevich definitely is looking to hire a new press secretary made me feel a twinge of sympathy for the yet-to-be determined person who takes the job.

Somebody is going to have to walk into utter chaos, a situation in state government where nobody trusts nobody (just like Chicago City Hall) and everybody is looking out for number one, while figuring out if they need to do a number two on somebody else.

IT WAS JUST this week on the “Illinois Lawmakers” program (a long-running PBS institution in Illinois) that Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, dumped all the blame for Illinois government’s problems on Blagojevich.

Why doesn’t anyone trust Blagojevich?

The governor, Madigan said, is the kind of person who “tries to pull people apart” rather than build coalitions of government people that might accomplish something.

It is the press secretary who had to come up with a response to Madigan’s cheap shot, knowing full well that the speaker of the house has a long memory and will not forget who it was that took shots back at him.

IF ANYTHING, IT is a position for somebody who does not have a desire to have a long-standing career working in Illinois government, but would like to be able to say they witnessed government up close – as preparation for doing something else with their lives.

The governor’s political enemies will soon become the press secretary’s enemies, and their face will forever become associated with the name Blagojevich.

I have never been one to agree with the press corps jokes about people going over to “the dark side” when they take a government spokesman position. I actually believe that one can do worthwhile work in such a position in terms of making it possible for the general public to understand just what it is their tax dollars are being used for.

Some of the most decent people I ever knew on public payrolls were press secretaries. Of course, some of the laziest hacks I have ever known also held the job.

NOT THAT I’M desperate enough to try to show I could do better.

I could use better paying, more stable employment than the little bits of work I am doing these days, but the mental aggravation that a new press secretary will have to put up with working for Blagojevich is not worth it.

Now out of a sense of disclosure, I should admit that I actually circulated my resume to Blagojevich’s people about four years ago for a possible press-related job, and I actually interviewed for a job two years ago when Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan needed a new press secretary.

I didn’t get hired either time, and I have come to see both of those non-hirings as blessings in disguise. I am of such a temperament that I likely would use choice obscenities to tell off the first person (reporter-type or political geek) who annoyed me – which would result in my immediate dismissal.

I ALSO FIND my interest in government-related issues is in the institution itself. I don’t think I could ever make myself so loyal to a single individual that I would be willing to engage in the political sparring that often takes place between government agencies or constitutional officers – even if they are of the same political party. (Anybody who thinks that every single Democrat is supposed to love and respect every other Dem is naïve. The same goes for Republicans).

I don’t know how I would handle the barrage of questions that Blagojevich people are going to get in the coming months related to the forces among Republicans, disaffected Democrats and criminal prosecutors – all of whom want to peddle the notion that the Illinois governor is on his way to prison.

I probably would be too inclined to call people on their partisan desires to see a criminal conspiracy at work, and that would not necessarily be good for the people of Illinois.

Political people have to know when not to be brutally honest. That does not mean I am saying they should lie. Most just know when to shut up and say nothing, even if it means they look ignorant to the press corps.

IN FACT, THE biggest trouble that a government spokesman can get into is if they are caught passing along deliberately deceiving information. That is when the press secretary becomes worthless and ought to be fired – what’s the point of paying them if nobody is going to believe what they say?

When I worked as a reporter type for various wire services or newspapers, I never expected government press people (and yeah, I’m calling them press secretaries, even if that technically offends the broadcast geeks of the world) to dump stories into my lap.

I always figured the press secretary/communications director/spokesman/whatever you want to call it existed to double-check statistics for government stories, or to provide statements from the governor on the ongoing issues of the day.

That person also ought to be able to give advice to their politically-elected boss as to how to avoid doing something stupid that will create a public image problem – and also avoid wasted time and tax dollars from being spent fighting off controversies.

IT’S NOT THAT I think the politician’s public image is all that important, but I do have respect for the positions these elected officials hold and for the institution that is Illinois state government, Chicago city government or any other governmental institution.

The best press secretaries are the ones who realize they are working for the institution and are doing their part to keep it running soundly and on behalf of the people whose taxes fund the essential services that government can best provide.

Too much of the problem with the Blagojevich administration is that it gives off the perception that it considers the fate of Rod himself to be more important than that of the state of Illinois.

A GOOD PRESS secretary will be able to stand up to that notion and know who to put first – the taxpayers of Illinois.

So as the state/Blagojevich figures out who will be their new press aide, we all ought to take into account the high-profile tension that the job’s recipient will undergo. That person will get my sympathy – at least until they start trying to pass along deliberate untruths to the public.

And despite my sincere interest in the workings of Illinois government, you couldn’t pay me enough to take the job.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: If you want to apply (or to know seriously just what a governor expects from a political mouthpiece), the job has been posted (http://www.careerbuilder.com/JobSeeker/Jobs/JobDetails.aspx?job_did=J8E2T279009KDHL2KHH&cbRecursionCnt=2&cbsid=0a72e8584ca1477d9c0e671f6ad59577-264782377-RO-4) on the Internet.

For those of you who want to make jokes about a gubernatorial spokesman, the Capitol Fax weblog had a feisty debate (http://www.thecapitolfaxblog.com/2008/05/21/question-of-the-day-529/) going earlier this week.