Word: gergen
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...need some hacks. Gergen's a hack. Maybe he can help." -- A WHITE HOUSE AIDE
Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers plunked herself down in David Gergen's basement office in the West Wing last Monday night and laid out her problem. Just hours before, Clinton had named Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court, but then abruptly ended a press conference when Brit Hume of ABC News nettled the President with a question about his tortured selection process. Myers told Gergen that she expected the morning to bring good economic news, and was looking for a way to capitalize on that story and make the Rose Garden incident history. Gergen, who served as communications director...
Clinton was cool to Gergen's idea at first but relented after some prodding. He appeared before reporters the next day at noon, and made a cathartic joke at his own expense. "You know what I'm upset about?" he asked the newly married Hume. "You got a honeymoon, and I didn't." As reporters chuckled, Gergen whispered to Myers, "That was perfect." Clinton left the briefing room feeling triumphant. "That was fun," he said to Myers. "We ought to do < more of it, you know...
...Gergen's toughest job will be to help Clinton cast as victories what are the necessary losses of political compromise. The Finance Committee's action last week put to rest any chance that Clinton would realize his goal of heavily taxing energy consumption to pay for new investments in education, plant and equipment. As Clinton imagined it, the new spending was supposed to stimulate the economy. "What's happened instead," said a senior official, "is that the stimulative effect will come almost entirely from lower interest rates that stem from deficit reduction, rather than from any impact of the budget...
...still remotely possible for Clinton to wake up, send Gergen back to Shields and utter words to that effect. But until he does, the cry from the left will have to be: Don't dump the corpse in our backyard...