The Public Spinmeisters

Why do politicians get a well-oiled PR machine at taxpayer expense?

Radley Balko | June 10, 2008

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In other words, we'd still have press offices, and they'd still be doing much of the same thing they do today-touting the wisdom, good looks, and selfless public service of the boss. The main difference is that instead of pushing on taxpayers the indignity of forcing us to pay for being propagandized to, the agitprop would come from a campaign office, and be paid for with campaign money.

No one else gets a well-oiled PR machine at taxpayer expense. Why should politicians?

Radley Balko is a senior editor for reason and maintains at Web log at TheAgitator.com. This article originally appeared at Foxnews.com

Comments

|6.10.08 @ 12:18PM|#

Eh, I always liked Ari Fleischer better anyway.

|6.10.08 @ 12:28PM|#

I liked Scotty. He got the most adorable deer in the headlights look when he lied. It was almost as though there was a vestigal conscience in there somewhere.

You look at Fleischer, he lied with the familiar ease of a man tying his shoes, with that dead, sociopathic emptiness in his eyes. Froze my blood.

|6.10.08 @ 12:32PM|#

And maybe the journalists should do their job too. How about reason giving, say, a thousand of us media credentials so we can show up when politicians (e.g. Sen. Boxer) and their mouthpieces spew crap and ask them some tough questions?

|6.10.08 @ 12:39PM|#

Can't be done. It's got to be someone's job to play liars poker with the press. If the job title isn't "press secretary" it will just wind up being something like "Assistant Deputy to the Chief of Staff".

Dave W.|6.10.08 @ 12:47PM|#

. . . why former Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan was being paid out of the public till to lie to the public.

Because when the Press Secretary spins nobody is fooled. When Foxnews spins some people are fooled. It is worth it to spend out the public coffers a bit for transparency of the applied spin.

|6.10.08 @ 1:08PM|#

"Because when the Press Secretary spins nobody is fooled."

True. The damaging lies were never the ones that emanated from the Press Secretary. The damaging ones were the lies that came via leaks to the press, which the press then asked the Press Secretary (or Bush, or Cheney, or Rice, or Rumsfeld) about, or which could be cited by the Press Secretary (und so weite).

On the other hand, I see no reason why the political Press Secretary shouldn't be an employee of a political party.

If taxpayers are going to pay for someone, that person should be some kind of administration FOIA officer, a no-nonsense source of simple factual document-based responses.

|6.10.08 @ 1:11PM|#

Ari was more entertaining. He always had a ready "Yeah, I'm lying... wanna do something about, bitch?" 'tude going. He was like the King of the Douchebags there for a while.

McClellan always struck me as being hired because he had perfected the "I'm too stupid to lie to you" quality of a puppy who just shit in your shoes.

Tony Snow. What can be said about Tony Snow that can't be accomplished by staring in the toilet before you flush for six months or so?

The blond bim-bot they have now doesn't even try to look like she believes what she is saying. It's astonishing frank.

frank|6.10.08 @ 1:48PM|#

yes it is

|6.10.08 @ 2:02PM|#

If we are going to pay the Press Secretary with public funds, at least now I can say that I wouldn't mind seeing the Press Secretary naked. That certainly wasn't true of Ari, Scott, Tony, or any of the others.

http://www.theodoresworld.net/pics/1207/perino.jpg

|6.10.08 @ 2:40PM|#

Radley - Please PLEASE post some of the emails you receive from Fox Newsers in response to the column. That's one of my favorite things about your Fox columns.

|6.11.08 @ 1:24AM|#

I for one would happily expend my tax dollars getting Dana Perino well oiled. Just give the money back to me and I'll fill a kiddie pool with the stuff.

|6.11.08 @ 8:51AM|#

joe, Sugarfree, if you read comix, check for Fleischer's "cameo" in Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Strikes Again". Hilarious.

|6.11.08 @ 10:55AM|#

The existence of the Press Secretary is simply the result of our demand to be informed of all the president's actions, thoughts, opinions, sartorial choices, etc. If there were no press secretary, either the President would have to field the constant barrage of questions--an entirely wasteful proposition--or we would have to allow the White House to go for days without answering queries from the press.