MSNBC President: 'This Channel Has Never Been the Voice of Obama. Ever.'

In an interview with the Huffington Post, MSNBC president Phil Griffin tries to push back against the notion that his channel has become a mouth-piece for President Barack Obama.

"This channel has never been the voice of Obama. Ever," Griffin tells Michael Calderone of the Huffington Post.  But, Calderone writes, "Griffin acknowledges that his hosts are more likely to agree with Obama on policy matters than with Republicans, but rejects comparisons to Fox News."

"People want to talk about Fox. Fox is the voice of the Republican Party," says Griffin to Calderone.

Griffin does, however, acknowledge to the left-leaningHuffington Post that many folks working at MSNBC have a "progressive sensibility."

"We hire smart people with a progressive sensibility. ... I tell them to go think for themselves. We don't have talking points," says Griffin.

The MSNBC president pledges to make sure Obama keeps "his campaign promises."

"We're going to hold Obama to his campaign promises," says Griffin. "And the fact is, there are many things that some of our hosts support him on. But basically, we have a standard, whether it's the war on terror or getting out of Afghanistan: Is he going to live up to his campaign promises?"

And Griffin compliments his employees for being "really smart" and not going "over the top" during the 2012 presidential campaign.

"What I really believe is we analyzed this election in a really smart way and we didn't go over the top,"Griffin tells Huffington Post. "We weren't just shilling for Obama. We were really smart. And people are responding to that now."

Via: Weekly Standard

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NY Times Blames Bill Clinton For Obama’s Drop In The Polls…

When the histories of the 2012 campaign are written, much will be made of Bill Clinton’s re-emergence. His convention speech may well have marked the finest moment of President Obama’s re-election campaign, and his ads on the president’s behalf were memorable.

POLITICAL TIMES

Matt Bai’s analysis and commentary.

But there is one crucial way in which the 42nd president may not have served the 44th quite as well. In these final weeks before the election, Mr. Clinton’s expert advice about how to beat Mitt Romney is starting to look suspect.

You may recall that last spring, just after Mr. Romney locked up the Republican nomination, Mr. Obama’s team abruptly switched its strategy for how to define him. Up to then, the White House had been portraying Mr. Romney much as George W. Bush had gone after John Kerry in 2004 – as inauthentic and inconstant, a soulless climber who would say anything to get the job.

But it was Mr. Clinton who forcefully argued to Mr. Obama’s aides that the campaign had it wrong. The best way to go after Mr. Romney, the former president said, was to publicly grant that he was the “severe conservative” he claimed to be, and then hang that unpopular ideology around his neck.

Via: NYT

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Bob Woodward on Obama's Sequestration Comments: 'What The President Said Is Not Correct'

Bob Woodward says President Barack Obama got some of his facts wrong on sequester at Monday night’s debate.

Woodward’s book, “The Price of Politics,” has been the go-to fact check source for the president’s answer, in which he claimed the idea of using deep, automatic, across-the-board domestic and defense spending cuts to force Congress to address the nation’s burgeoning federal deficit originated from Congress, not from the White House.

(Also on POLITICO: D.C. caught off guard by Obama sequester vow)

“What the president said is not correct,” Woodward told POLITICO Tuesday. “He’s mistaken. And it’s refuted by the people who work for him.”

Woodward, a Washington Post journalist who was a key reporter on the initial coverage of the Watergate scandal, said he stands behind his reporting in the book, which drew upon sources involved in last year’s deficit talks and detailed notes taken in the meetings.

(Also on POLITICO: Woodward's book: 5 telling moments)

Woodward reports in his book that White House Office of Management Director Jack Lew and Legislative Affairs Director Rob Nabors took the proposal for sequestration to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and then it was presented to congressional Republicans.

During the debate, however, Obama said the idea originated on Capitol Hill.

“First of all, the sequester is not something that I've proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed,” Obama said, adding his strongest pronouncement to date on its future: “It will not happen.”

Woodward said there’s a possibility the president was unaware of how the idea came about.

“It’s a complicated process — and in fairness to the president — maybe he didn’t know that they were doing this because it’s kind of technical budget jargon,” Woodward said.

Via: Politico

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