Shocker: Obama To Get High-Tech Teleprompter For White House Press Briefings
Obama came off like a robot delivering lines in his first “prime time” press conference, so to fix that his handlers are looking into installing a teleprompter into his podium so that they can feed him his lines.
One wouldn’t know it from reading the Washington Post or New York Times, but some inside the White House don’t think that President Barack Obama hit a home run with his first national press conference last week.
“It looked scripted beyond the scripted part, the speech,” says one former communications adviser, who has been feeding notes and suggestions to the White House team and worked with them on the inauguration. “Every president has gone into one of these things knowing that there were some pre-arranged questions or journalists to be called on, but this one was pretty ham-handed.”
To that end, he says, the White House is looking to install a small video or computer screen into the podium used by the president for press conferences and events in the White House. “It would make it easier for the comms guys to pass along information without being obvious about it,” says the adviser.
The screen would indicate whom to call on, seat placement for journalists, pass along notes or points to hit, and so forth, says the adviser.
The One gets all sorts of praise for being a wonderful orator, but the truth is that he trips all over himself unless whatever it is he’s saying has been pre-scripted and rehearsed. Bush, who was reviled for being a sub-par public speaker, would have had dump trucks full of abuse dumped on him if he pulled something like this.
But more troubling than Obama’s not-as-good-as-advertised speaking skills (which is funny, but not really all that important) is the fact that Obama’s supposedly spontaneous press briefings are going to be heavily scripted with Obama getting cues about which reporters are safe to call on and which aren’t.
Again, can you imagine if Bush tried something like that? Of course, it wouldn’t have worked with Bush as he didn’t have any friends in the press room. But Obama does, and it seems clear that Obama and his people are going to do what they can to make sure their friends in the press corps are the ones getting the questions.
