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President Barack Obama invited all three network anchors to the White House. He intended to grant a round of interviews to use his bully pulpit to grab saturation coverage to push for his fiscal stimulus package. Then news broke out. Tom Daschle, the President's nominee to be Health Secretary, withdrew his name. He had used a chauffered limousine to travel around the nation's capital for three years without paying for it--and then had only paid taxes on the luxury perk retroactively once he was offered the Cabinet job. The Obama sitdowns, the Story of the Day, were divided between the two issues. ABC and NBC both led with their anchors' interviews. CBS kicked off with a White House report to set up its interview.

"The Theme of the Day has a funny way of going awry," mused NBC anchor Brian Williams, a onetime White House correspondent. "This one sure did today." Obama used almost the same form of words in each q-&-a to explain why he accepted Daschle's decision to step down. "We do not have two sets of rules here. Everybody has responsibilities," he declared to ABC anchor Charles Gibson, referring to the duty to pay one's taxes. "I do not want my administration to be sending a message that there are two sets of rules, one for prominent people and one for ordinary folks" he told CBS anchor Katie Couric. For NBC's Williams the formulation was almost identical: "It is important for this administration to send the message that there are not two sets of rules, one for prominent people and one for ordinary folks."

The President was a trifle more creative when asked to describe his emotional reaction to the Daschle debacle. He conceded to ABC's Gibson that he was "embarrassed" and "angry." "Angry and disappointed," were his offerings to NBC's Williams, and then "frustrated" and later "an embarrassment." "Frustrating," was also used for CBS' Couric. Couric and Williams both nailed the major soundbite that, for some reason, Obama withheld from Gibson. "I screwed up," was only heard by viewers of CBS and NBC.


Andrew Tyndall 2/4/09 9:13:07 pm

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