After my Reliable Sources appearance on CNN this weekend, I returned to the green room and heard some fascinating tidbits and assessments. Because I was chatting with folks in casual manner, I won’t attribute their remarks to them by name. But they were interesting. For starters, one non-conservative had assessed that President Obama either is not up to the job or he’s being terribly advised. He said that while Obama had run on repealing the Bush tax cuts, and thus that was “a settled issue,” the president was now throwing around a lot of ideas he that could have cost him the election — taxing health benefits, reducing the tax deduction for charitable contributions, and running up the deficit to all-time highs.
Another longtime Washington veteran observed that while he didn’t think Tim Geithner would be leaving the position of Treasury Secretary anytime soon, he did notice Christina Romer, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, was on CNN earlier in the day, appeared on Meet the Press last week, and suddenly seemed to be taking a much higher profile in the administration’s media strategy. In other words, Tim Geithner might still have his job, but his duties may involve less and less of a public role.
This morning, Geithner is giving a pen-and-paper-only briefing, while Romer appeared on all the morning shows and CNN. Hmmm . . .