Monday, November 10, 2008

Nuance

On Obama:
Barack Obama figured out early on that he had better limit his media consumption before it consumed him.

After three months of campaigning, he stopped reading blogs. After six months, he stopped watching cable news shows. After nine months, he stopped reading the clips, relying instead on his staff to flag important stories.
On Bush:
He walks into the Oval Office in the morning, Bush said, and asks Card: "what's in the newspapers worth worrying about? I glance at the headlines just to kind of (get) a flavor of what's moving," Bush said. "I rarely read the stories," he said.

[...] Instead, Bush is spoon-fed the relevant news from his staff. Top aides usually know the buttons not to push when it comes to bad news. More often they will tell the president what he wants to hear -- the good news if there is any. Or they may just sugar coat the news that is tougher to swallow.
The reaction to the revelation that one of these men doesn't read the news, but instead relies on aides, was outrage. The reaction to the other man was runderstanding and empathy. I'll let you figure out which was which.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home