Politico Challenges Bob Bauer's Credentials, Headlines Story 'Bob Bauer's Credentials Challenged'
White House Counsel Greg Craig resigned. He will be replaced with campaign lawyer Bob Bauer, who is Barack Obama's personal attorney. Politico asserted that he is unqualified and then sought out critics to call him unqualified.
They found a "high-ranking official" from "a previous Democratic administration" who thinks Bob is a bad choice, which allowed them to write that "even some Democrats" have "privately questioned" the appointment.
This is a photo caption: "Questions arise whether incoming White House counsel Bob Bauer's experience as a partisan warrior is appropriate for the position." The questions did not "arise" from the earth, unbidden. Nor were they torn from the thigh of Zeus. Politico reporters asked these questions, themselves.
But what's even better is who these questions arose to: the anonymous "high-ranking official" and Peter Wallison, the lawyer who most famously instructed Ronald Reagan to claim ignorance while testifying on Iran-Contra.*
Everyone else is like "well maybe he has done some stuff on campaign finance that I find personally distasteful but yes he is qualified." That's not gonna win the afternoon, guys.
The real tragedy here is that Politico went with "Bob Bauer Unqualified" instead of what will be the real scandal: he is an agent of ACORN!
The question, of course, came up...After a preliminary question about presidents and their NSC staffs, Tower asked Reagan about the discrepancy between his statement and Regan's on the question of whether he had given prior approval to the Israeli arms shipment. Reagan rose from his chair, walked around the desk and said to Wallison, "Peter, where is that piece of paper you had that you gave me this morning?" Then he picked up the paper and began to read, "If the question comes up at the Tower Board meeting, you might want to say that you were surprised."
HAH. A highly qualified quote-giver, this one.
Previously in "Politico Inventing And Then Reporting On Invented News" News:
Politico Reports on Story Politico Invented
Politico Begins Posting Fox News Slashfic
Scandal: Bill Before Congress Is Long, Complicated
[Photo: AP]