Hope and Change: All Five Questioners So Far Identified at Obama's "Open" Town Hall Were Obama Campaign Backers

What if Bush had done it?, part 88 and counting.

President Obama has promised to change the way the government does business, but in at least one respect he is taking a page from the Bush playbook, stocking his town hall Thursday with supporters whose soft -- though far from planted -- questions provided openings to discuss his preferred message of the day.

Obama has said, "I think it's important to engage your critics ... because not only will you occasionally change their mind but, more importantly, sometimes they will change your mind," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs recounted to The Post's Lois Romano in an interview Wednesday.

But while the online question portion of the White House town hall was open to any member of the public with an Internet connection, the five fully identified questioners called on randomly by the president in the East Room were anything but a diverse lot. They included: a member of the pro-Obama Service Employees International Union, a member of the Democratic National Committee who campaigned for Obama among Hispanics during the primary; a former Democratic candidate for Virginia state delegate who endorsed Obama last fall in an op-ed in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star; and a Virginia businessman who was a donor to Obama's campaign in 2008.

How on earth does the WaPo reporter here have enough information to reassure readers -- based on their own supposed authority -- that the questions were "far from planted"? Given that all of the people so far identified were in fact Obama supporters, doesn't this raise serious questions about how Obama was so fortunate as to just happen to call on friendly forces for his questions?

The reporter simply asserts this offering no evidence for it. Ashamed, it seems, of his own report.

Because Obama > Truth.

Via Hot Air's headlines. Meahwhile, as the WaPo denigrates and undermines its own reporting to protect Obama, the Economist becomes the latest voice to declare that Obama might not be precisely the man he sold himself as.

Incidentally... How is this "from the Bush playbook"? Yes, I do remember that his appearances were tightly controlled, but he didn't portray them as open to everyone, either. And fairly high-ranking Republicans and campaign donors were not "randomly" chosen to ask questions of him.

I know that didn't happen -- because if it had, the press would have screamed about it.

The only purported incidence of this was the ridiculous claims about Jeff Gannon.

posted by Ace at 01:18 PM

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