WaPo Buries the Lead: Obama's Team Scrubbed School Speech of Politically-Charged Elements in Response to Right's Criticism

In a story about how the Obama Administration is debating internally "how hard" to hit back against conservative opponents -- so far, it seems, shock of shocks, they're delivering the attacks to liberal outlets (um, that would be the Past-Tense Media) to make the attacks on Obama's behalf as he stays "post-partisan" 'n stuff -- we have this revelation:

he White House officials are eager to avoid the perception that the president is directly engaging critics who appear to speak only for a vocal minority, and part of their strategy involves pushing material to liberal and progressive media outlets to steer the coverage in their direction, senior advisers said.

When critics lashed out at President Obama for scheduling a speech to public school students this month, accusing him of wanting to indoctrinate children to his politics, his advisers quickly scrubbed his planned comments for potentially problematic wording. They then reached out to progressive Web sites such as the Huffington Post, liberal bloggers and Democratic pundits to make their case to a friendly audience.

The controversy escalated, but by the time it was over, White House advisers thought they had emerged with the upper hand. The speech, they said, was the most-viewed live video on any government Web site in history, and they were pleased with the media coverage of the event.

But of course they were.

posted by Ace at 10:52 AM

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