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President Barack Obama generated the Story of the Day by virtue of his bipartisan outreach not because of his diplomatic bridgebuilding. Obama made news by granting his first television interview as President to al-Arabiya, the Saudi-owned, Dubai-based cable news channel. Yet the more newsworthy story was his visit to Capitol Hill to lobby for $825bn in fiscal stimulus over the next two yaers. He held meetings with members of both the House and the Senate--but only with members of the Republican Party. ABC and NBC led with Obama's GOP outreach. CBS chose winter weather as an icestorm moved from the southern plains towards the Atlantic seaboard.

Tyndall Report complained Monday about Chip Reid's scattershot approach to his new job as CBS' White House correspondent. No complaints today. Reid now reverts to a conventional style, joining his colleagues Jake Tapper at ABC and Chuck Todd at NBC, in a straightforward account of President Obama's sortie to Capitol Hill. The meetings are unlikely to produce votes, especially from the House GOP caucus. ABC's Tapper predicted support from "a dozen" Republicans; NBC' Todd vaguely counted "probably not a lot;" CBS' Reid put it as opposition by "nearly all."

The payoff, instead, appeared to be atmospheric. Many Republicans "commended Obama for changing the tone and making later compromise possible," CBS' Reid reported. NBC's Todd saw the visit as an opportunity to "showcase" his campaign promise to change that tone. ABC's Tapper quoted a soundbite from House Minority Leader John Boehner on Good Morning America: "There is a dialogue. I am encouraged that the President is engaged in this dialogue."

As for the details of the legislation, both ABC's Tapper and CBS' Reid quoted the following complaint from Rep Michael Pence, a GOP leader: "The only thing it will stimulate is more government and more debt." Pence's observation is confusing when framed as a complaint since it is an accurate, even supportive, description of how Keynesian fiscal counter-cyclical stimulus is supposed to work. ABC's Betsy Stark offered anchor Charles Gibson an Economics 101 on the relative benefits or deficit spending versus tax cuts to inject stimulus. The government spending has the larger multiplier effect because some tax cuts are saved instead of spent; the cuts have a quicker impact because they appear immediately as an increase in workers' take-home pay.

CBS' Reid elaborated on Pence's protest against government spending: $50m for the National Endowment for the Arts; $335m for teenage sex education; $200m for improvements to the DC Mall; $20bn in highway funds that will take more than 18 months to be disbursed; $15bn in similarly delayed alternative energy projects. Add them all together and $36bn out of a total stimulus of $825bn hardly seems grounds for opposition.


Andrew Tyndall 1/28/09 9:17:38 pm

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