Vindicated!! Gibbs Admits POTUS Prepped for Gates Question (Updated)
Alas, if only RBO had more time to watch the talking heads and spinsters on Sunday morning tv, we would have found out sooner that White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs admitted yesterday morning, on Fox News Sunday, that POTUS “had been prepared to answer questions about the Henry Louis Gates arrest” at the July 22 Presidential Press Conference.
Jack Dunphy wrote at NRO:
Bret Baier, filling in for regular host Chris Wallace, asked Gibbs, “Before Wednesday’s news conference, did you prepare [the president] for a question about Henry Gates’s arrest in Cambridge?”
“Well, look,” said Gibbs, “Let’s just say it’s safe to say we went over a whole lot of topics that we thought might come up, and certainly this was a topic that was, has been in the news . . .” He then went on to try to un-ring the bell by repeating the line that the president “hadn’t calibrated his words well,” and blah, blah, blah, beer at the White House, blah, blah, blah.
So now we know that President Obama didn’t properly “calculate” his words about the Cambridge police “acting stupidly” even after being prepared for such a question in advance. Thus is revealed the president’s tone deafness in failing to anticipate the backlash such an answer might provoke.
And now we are told, in a further attempt at damage control, that the Gates arrest can serve to educate all those mouth-breathing cops out there who may yet stumble into an unpleasant encounter with some other Ivy Leaguer. It’s our hope, said Gibbs, invoking that insufferable locution that one hopes will soon fade from common usage, that the Gates arrest can be “part of a teachable moment.”
Update 7/26 12:00 noon: Something We Missed: The Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman wrote July 26:
We can all agree with Obama on one thing — he wasn’t there and didn’t know all the facts. The White House press office tells me the president didn’t talk to Gates or read the police report before commenting.
This is an important addition to the known facts. Just because POTUS didn’t talk to Gates prior to the prime time presser — and had not read the police report — does not discount the strong possibility that others from the West Wing had. To restate this, the White House press office, headed by Gibbs, is only assuring us that POTUS had not done these things — not that no one else from that office had. Secondhand knowledge in this case — surely, like all presidents before him, POTUS has people to handle these minor details and report the substance to him — is just about the equivalent of POTUS having called Gates or read the police report himself.
Obama prepped for this question, but Dick Morris said it’s obviously he didn’t test poll his answer, because he blew it.
It’s interesting that even though Obama has “mended the fences”, there is still a lot of coverage of this issue both in print and on air media.