by Bob Brigham
Jim Messina, Obama’s Josh Lyman, Needed Help Turning on ESPN?
8:18 pm in Uncategorized by Bob Brigham
The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein has a new piece on the sausage making that resulted in the pathetic health care bill. Sam seemed to pitch his editors on writing a story that HCR was just like Obama’s campaign, but he wrote it with a secondary narrative surrounding the University of Montana football season, which wasn’t clearly defined, but should have been the metaphor for looking at what ended up in the context of the midterms.
While I live in California, I went to UM and was even the student voice during the 1997 legislative session. I’d watched a number of last year’s regular season games online (it was easy, all I had to do was go to www.MontanaGrizzlies.com and follow the links). Of course, I watched all the playoff games.
But if you want a secondary metaphor, what the fuck is up with this?
[Jim] Messina grew antsy. Somehow, with the help of a Reid staffer, he found the Montana game on one of the office’s small television sets.
This was the championship, the final game of the season, but Jim Messina had no clue how to watch it outside of the White House theater? Now I’m not surprised he couldn’t figure out how to watch it online, but the game was the championship, it was on ESPN. Yet it was only "somehow" — with staff support — that Jim Messina changed the channel to ESPN, despite all his time on the Hill as Chief of Staff to Max Baucus, Byron Dorgan and Carolyn McCarthy.
Is it any wonder the White House doesn’t even try to do more?
