海角大神

For 3-1/2 years, Jay Carney was the bespectacled, youthful-looking man on the podium, taking incoming from an information-hungry White House press corps.

Now his tour as President Obama鈥檚 press secretary is over, and at a breakfast with reporters Thursday hosted by 海角大神, Mr. Carney peeled back the curtain a bit. What most surprised him?聽 What did he learn? How has the rapidly changing media landscape affected policy and politics?

鈥淲hat is surprising is how human the enterprise is, how small the rooms are, how in the end, very weighty decisions are made in a very human way,鈥� Carney said.

As a former White House correspondent for Time magazine, Carney came in with a sense of how things worked that wasn鈥檛 quite right, he says.聽 White House reporters, including his former self, 鈥渕ake assumptions about control and process and intent鈥� that don鈥檛 account for the reality: that 鈥渁 lot of these issues have to be decided 鈥� by a handful of people sitting in a room who are dealing with the best collection of facts that they might be able to get.鈥�

But invariably, Carney adds, the collection of facts is incomplete and the environment challenging. Usually, by the time an issue reaches the Oval Office, 鈥測ou don鈥檛 have the luxury鈥� of having the option that says, 鈥淵ou get everything you want.鈥�

The other side of that, he adds, is that 鈥渢he people in that room are trying to do the right thing as they see it.鈥� I was very encouraged by what I saw from the very beginning, people dealing with, especially beginning with economic collapse and through to this day, with really, really tough issues and trying to get it right, in a way that they thought best served the country and its people.鈥澛�

鈥淭hat sounds a little mooshy,鈥� Carney said, 鈥渂ut it is encouraging, because I think there is a tendency, and I again succumbed to it, to be very cynical about the decisionmaking process, very cynical about what the reasoning behind anything that a White House does is.鈥�

鈥淭here鈥檚 a tendency to assume that politics and political considerations drive every decision,鈥� Carney says. 鈥淎nd I鈥檓 here to tell you that鈥檚 definitely not the case. I鈥檓 here to tell you, as somebody on the communications political side, it would have been a lot more convenient had it been the case, in some ways. But it鈥檚 just not. And that鈥檚 I think for the country a good thing.鈥�

Was there a tension between his 鈥渙ld self鈥� 鈥� the news reporter and analyst 鈥� and his 鈥渘ewer self鈥� as a spokesman, where the job was perhaps to 鈥渟pin,鈥� or as former Clinton White House press secretary Mike McCurry put it, 鈥渢elling the truth slowly鈥�?

Carney says he benefited greatly from spending his first two years in the Obama White House working as communications director for Vice President Joe Biden, a behind-the-scenes job.

鈥淲hen I got in there 鈥� I was shocked to find out how the expertise I felt I had developed as a political reporter about communications strategies and White House communications was not really expertise, and there was a lot to learn,鈥� says Carney. One of his teachers was former top Obama adviser David Axelrod, himself a former newspaper reporter. 聽

鈥淚 felt liberated,鈥� Carney said, no longer having to avoid taking sides on issues.

Carney also experienced the dramatic changes in the media landscape from a unique vantage point 鈥� inside the White House pressure cooker. Since Obama has taken office, social media have flourished as a force for both gathering information and disseminating it. Media outlets that barely existed, or didn鈥檛 exist at all, are now central to the daily conversation.

From the perspective of White House communications, these changes force assessments 鈥� made 鈥渧ery quickly鈥� 鈥� about 鈥渨hether or not we need to chase that ball down the field or we should take a step back and wait and see where something is going that鈥檚 just popping in Twitter or elsewhere.鈥�

There鈥檚 often an urge to respond 鈥渋nstantly and aggressively,鈥� Carney says. But 鈥渢here is some wisdom in being discerning about doing that, because Twitter and social media have created an environment where new news grabs people鈥檚 attentions here much more quickly than it used to.鈥�

鈥淭he fires burn brighter than they used to,鈥� he says, 鈥渂ut they burn out faster.鈥�