OPINION:
The art of the spin has become a science in Washington, and just as important as the art of the spin is what we can call the science of the plop. The plop doctors drop the bad news with a resounding plop! on Friday afternoon, just as the guilty parties are on their way to Reagan National Airport or Union Station (few take the Greyhound bus) to flee for the weekend, leaving the bad news to marinate while the spin doctors cook up their mush for Monday morning. Every White House is staffed with Ph.D.s in both plop- and spinology. The Obama White House is particularly adept in both the science and the art.
Mr. Obama’s bad-news shop dropped the news that the Obamacare deadlines would have to be extended to cover the opening disaster was dropped on March 31, a Friday night. Both ploppers and spinners got a twofer with the employer mandate, announced not only on a Friday but on the Fourth of July. The Roman candles made a lot of covering noise and color for the night sky. The scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs was plopped down on a Friday afternoon.
Changes in Obamacare were announced on a Friday. These were played by the rules of the game. The changes in Obamacare required more than 300 pages to explain it all, extending the length of the open-enrollment season (just expired for this year) and to push the insurance companies to be more transparent about their plans and prices (speaking of mush), and to nudge customers toward plans that sometimes would not cost as much as the plans they had.
One might think important changes would be announced in the light of day when Congress, administrators, editors, reporters, pundits and plain Americans would have ample time to go through them, ask questions and consider the implications. But if one thinks that, Washington is not the place for one. One might well consider moving to Topeka or Texarkana, where life is more innocent.
Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House never to return to speakerhood, committed (if only by accident) the “gaffe” of the year that her spin doctors could never get to properly spin: Congress would have to pass President Obama’s health care reform bill to find out what, exactly, was in it.
Other examples abound. The Friday afternoon folly belies the notion, relentlessly prescribed and pushed by the spin doctors, that Mr. Obama’s ideas, whenever and however announced, would be popular with the people but for the obstruction of the president’s enemies. Mr. Obama’s critics are accused of standing in the way of what the people want, that as the “Party of No” they’re blocking reforms that would not only be good policy but winners at the ballot box.
But then the president and his ploppers and spinners would announce these “popular” schemes and dreams with fanfare and trumpets, with shouts of hosanna to the applause of his fans. No need to slip the news under the door as late on Friday as possible, hoping it would be too late to make the front pages and television newscasts, and might even be forgotten or overshadowed by news of mayhem in other places.
The new congressmen coming to town and innocent of the wiles of Washington should do their due diligence about how presidents and their courtiers behave. What the administration wants to hide is precisely what most needs prompt and full discussion. The past, being prologue, has lots to say about the future.
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