Belated New Year's resolution for 2021: If any cable network puts her under contract as a political commentator after her disgraceful performance in a job where taxpayers pay her salary, I resolve to never watch it again.
I've written before about why the briefing is important: washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-ask…
"The daily briefing, whatever its flaws, provided a ritualized means of holding power accountable."
"The daily to-and-fro was also an equalizer, where smaller news organizations and specialty outlets had an opportunity to raise questions they could not get answered through phone calls or emails to a press operation that frequently ignores all but the big dogs on the beat."
"And there is another, less obvious benefit: Knowing that the White House will have to answer questions in a regular, public forum forces important discussions among decision-makers. They know they are likely to be exposed and embarrassed if they try to wing it on the details."
"As McCurry told me: 'With sharper and clearer answers, you get sharper and clearer policy.' "

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More from @ktumulty

6 Jan
Please indulge (or ignore) a thread: I first got to DC as a Capitol Hill reporter for the LA Times back in the 1980s, before a bomb went off near the Senate Chamber. I fell in love with the Capitol. Back then, no one even needed to wear credentials around their necks ...
Tourists would wander the place pretty much with no restrictions. My single favorite spot is the anteroom of what is now @senatemajldr office, which is the only place in DC that has been part of all 3 branches of govt at one point ...
It was where the Supreme Court once used to change into their robes and (am I right here?) the VP's office. The fireplace is where the British are said to have set Thomas Jefferson's personal library on fire to burn down the Capitol in 1814...
Read 7 tweets
6 Sep 20
What is alleged here -- "straw" donations -- is not a minor violation. Many people have faced prison for this. Get ready for a thread. washingtonpost.com/investigations…
Read 8 tweets
1 Jun 20
LBJ on the riots of 68: “What did you expect? I don’t know why we’re surprised. When you put your foot on a man’s neck and hold him down for 300 years, and then you let him up, what’s he going to do? He’s going to knock your block off.”
More LBJ after the assassination of MLK: “If I were a kid in Harlem, I know what I’d be thinking right now: I’d be thinking that the whites have declared open season on my people, and they’re going to pick us off one by one unless I get a gun and pick them off first.”
And: “We need something positive to carry to the people. Otherwise we’ll be caught with nothing. And the people just won’t behave in a vacuum.”
Read 4 tweets
17 Dec 19
Trying to remember: When was the last time that anything the House Rules Committee did merited any coverage at all, much less the live broadcast of one of its markups on all three cable news networks?
The word "powerful" is always attached to the Rules Committee. It does indeed have a lot of power, but it does not exercise it independently. Not since the 1970s has it operated as anything other than a tool of the Speaker. Here's how it evolved: republicans-rules.house.gov/history-rules-…
During the civil rights movement, the Rules Committee was an independent power base, from which southern chairmen kept anti-discrimination bottled up in the 1950s and early 1960s: archives.gov/exhibits/treas…
Read 7 tweets
24 Sep 19
Another moderate Democratic House freshman just came out for impeachment: Rep Lizzie Fletcher of Texas.
Here's her statement:
Key sentence (as @LisaDNews notes) leaves some wiggle room: "The House of Representatives should act swiftly to investigate and should be prepared to use the remedy exclusively in its power: impeachment.”
Read 4 tweets

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