obama struggling in the stone age

There is a sense, at the moment, that Obama is failing to get his message across on the stimulus and struggling to strike the right tone. Part of the problem, as a sympathetic Democratic strategist points out, is that the awesome communications machine and massive team that Obama had at his disposal during the campaign are no longer available to him:

Even with closet-sized spaces, the White House can only accommodate about only about 200 or so people for jobs ranging from national security to health care reform to Internet guru.

The Obama team “built this incredible campaign and now they have these ridiculously primitive tools. The communication tools they mastered don’t exist in the White House. It’s like they are in a cave,” said Trippi.

Whereas all the Republicans have to do is call Rush Limbaugh:

“Then there are the masters of the Stone Age and they are doing a good job,” he added.

Comments

[Lyle]

I get Trippi's point, especially about the far-flung reach of Republican Stone-Agers (a redundant phrase, n'est-ce pas?), but at risk of muting his otherwise-excellent simile, one might wonder what happened to the Old Executive Office Building, one door over on Pennsylvania Avenue? It's officially home to the Veep's offices, but nothing should stop any essential executive over-flow from segueing into that rather large building.

Also, the West Wing's relatively primitive setting never diminished outreach of Dubya's agenda -- hell, we invaded Iraq based on mis-information disseminated from that space. So something else if going on. MSM's obsession with various Presidential appointees' (even withdrawn ones') old tax records, perhaps? It's so much simpler to re-hash the easy-to-understand-and-report-on topic of tax pecadilloes than it is to wade through stimulus bill minutiae. And appointee imbroglios make for more exciting news than -- yawn -- describing the appropriations details of a bill, albeit a bill that will either save or sink the United States (and with it, the rest of the world)!