Romer on "Meet the Press": Bombs away with friendly fire

The blitzkrieg will be televised, "beginning Sunday," reported the Politico in its headlining piece, "Obama launches message war," on Saturday.

The president's economic generals, you see, were to fan out across the great Sunday showscape "to defend [his] budget" and, better yet, crush the resistance through a dazzling display of awesome rhetorical firepower and superior intellectual ordnance.

But, oh dear, did you see "Meet the Press"? It was a stirring bloodbath, all right, a real Alamo assault. Problem was, Obama's spokesperson, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, was on the inside.

What in God's name was the White House thinking? Not in my memory has anyone so ill fitted to the job of puff and fluff been dispatched before the cameras. Ms. Romer's performance was inarguably inelegant -- I later thought of Albert Brooks anchoring the news in "Broadcast News" -- but far worse, she was shamefully ill prepped by those who sent her into battle. The blood was on their hands, not hers.

David Gregory's first question set the stage of desolation. Obama, he said, now claims some of the economy's fundamentals are strong, yet just months ago, when the economy was still clinging to better stats, he verbally dismembered John McCain for saying the very same thing on the campaign trail. What gives?

For an equipped, prepared, eloquent chair of CEA, this was kid's stuff. David, or so she should have said, I'm an economist, not a politician or spin artist. I'll leave the politics of this to others. But David, here are the facts of where we stand ...

Instead, we heard Ms. Romer unfurl a baffling circumlocution and watched her squirm and sweat: the fundamentals are strong, the fundamentals aren't strong, they are sort of strong but sort of not -- it was a humiliating meltdown of waffling amateurism.

Number One show, Question One, and the president's "message war" was already in full, frantic and confused retreat. It then proceeded to stumble along with equally powerful on-air ineptitude; so I did what any horrified but patriotic citizen would do: I closed my eyes and prayed for an end to the shelling through the blessed mercy of a commercial break. Hours, perhaps days later, one came.

Again, I don't really blame Ms. Romer. Yes she was staggeringly unprepared, but I mean that in the sense of ill prepped -- by the White House communications office, which never should have scheduled her conspicuous unease to begin with. It was an inexcusably dark opening offensive for the president's "message war."

Providence, however, was alert to Ms. Romer's predestined plight in one respect: She was followed by House Minority Whip Eric Cantor.

What can one say about this Gingrichite Whiz Kid, except that he makes his role model look positively warm, personable, and every bit as visionary as Mr. Gingrich and his publicity agents insist Newt is.

Whip Cantor came out blasting, I'll give him that. The Obama administration, he screeched in exasperation, has had since November to formulate a banking plan or at least some semblance thereof. And where, pray tell, is it? demanded Cantor. They call this leadership?

So what's your plan? asked Gregory. What's the Republican solution? Oh, well, said Cantor, we will have one, and soon. I swear, he didn't even bat a red-faced eye; it was as though the pregnant disconnect had been fathered by some scalawag unknown.

Cantor's performance was a hoot, the best possible antidote for my still-lingering Romeritis. And it got even better. Especially, for instance, when Gregory pointed out to Mr. Cantor that notwithstanding his noble horror at the earmark-laden omnibus bill recently passed, he himself had supported no less than 46,000 earmarks throughout his Congressional career.

Cantor's comeback? It's his job to be part of the "honest opposition."

For the moment, that opposition is so laughably incompetent and clueless it is fair to say it's not much of a threat, except to itself. But the White House can't count on that remaining the case; it has got to wage its message war as though it's up against the cleverest, most resourceful of enemies. Yet what I witnessed yesterday, on the most-watched and most publicly influential talk show, wasn't even close.