Jay Carney spent three years successfully keeping the press at bay even as reporters grew increasingly disenchanted and adversarial with the administration.
During his tenure as White House press secretary, Carney, who stepped down on Friday, faced grillings over several administration failures, real and perceived, ranging from the botched Obamacare rollout to the revelations of NSA surveillance to the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi. Throughout it all, the press secretary was confident and composed, said journalists who cover the White House. He might dodge, counter, or stonewall — a source of constant frustration for the reporters — but he rarely blundered or left his boss vulnerable.
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Indeed, Carney’s most notable achievement, many said, is that he did nothing notable.
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“For the most part, he kept his cool and made remarkably few mistakes — quite a feat considering all the White House has been through since he took the job,” said Jon Karl, the ABC News senior White House correspondent who clashed frequently with Carney on camera at the daily briefings.
“Carney seemed to check all the boxes in terms of having a solid tenure: No mega-memorable blunders, managed to say very little in a smart-sounding and telegenic way and seemed reasonably in-the-loop about the president’s thinking (in so much as that ever translated to anything in the briefing room),” said Mark Leibovich, the New York Times Magazine chief national correspondent.
“There’s a bit of a ‘If-No-One-Remembers-the-Referee’s-Name-He’s Probably-Doing-his-Job’ factor in assessing a press secretary,” Leibovich added. “The big difference being that in the current media environment, more people probably know the White press secretary’s name and face than they did any of his predecessors.”
(Also on POLITICO: Press secretary Jay Carney steps down)
If reporters had any illusions three years ago that they would get kid gloves treatment from a former colleague - Carney had been White House bureau chief for Time - he quickly showed them that wouldn’t be the case and transitioned over to what journalists call “the dark side” in record time and with seeming ease.
By all accounts, President Barack Obama and top White House staff valued Carney’s work on their behalf. Dan Pfeiffer, a senior assistant to President BarackObama, praised him as “a huge asset” to the administration.
“In an age when reporters are tweeting analysis of the briefing as it happens and always looking for some potential gaffe, the podium part of the job has never been more important or more difficult,” Pfeiffer wrote in an email. “Its essentially like doing ‘Meet the Press’ for an hour a day two hundred times a year. I have always been amazed at Jay’s ability to do the briefing, keep his calm, and make no gaffes under tremendous pressure. He also helped us better understand the pressures the reporters in the briefing room are under, which I think helped better respond to the needs of the press corps.”
(QUIZ: How well do you know Jay Carney?)
“Every press secretary serves two masters – the President and the Press — which puts them in an impossible situation, but I think everyone involved is better because Jay served in this role,” Pfeiffer wrote.
Carney, who was in the job for three years and four-and-a-half months, was the longest serving White House press secretary since Mike McCurry, who served under President Bill Clinton from December 1994 to August 1998. He previously worked in Vice President Joe Biden’s press shop.
Carney was tapped as White House press secretary in February 2011 to replace Robert Gibbs, a member of Obama’s inner circle who was relatively intimate with the president’s thinking. Gibbs also had no problem being combative with the press, when required.
Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://ift.tt/1iDOe5e
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