White House plots VA-scandal distractions: Column

An air of hubris — a sort of we-know-it-all quality — has permeated the Obama White House from the beginning. It worked as a public relations strategy for the better part of five years. But it seems to be breaking down now.

The sophisticated swagger and savoir faire projected by the President and his strategists — audacity with cool, if you will — captivated a major segment of the 2008 voting public, many of whom were tired of George W. Bush and believed Barack Obama could bring real change to Washington.

This somewhat-arrogant-and-sometimes-intimidating PR approach to governing had success. It helped him pass a $787 billion economic stimulus bill and browbeat fellow Democrats to enact a highly partisan health care plan that Republicans wanted no part of. It got him through a bruising re-election campaign despite a less-than-stellar record on the economy and still-lingering questions about his handling of the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

But over the past 12 months, the vaunted Obama PR limousine, used to smoothing out bumps with ease, has been blowing tires as it tries to roll over a minefield of crises and scandals.

Troubles began with allegations that the IRS targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny during an election year.

They were followed by startling revelations about NSA domestic spying and the leaking of secrets by Edward Snowden.

Obama ran into criticism for waffling on chemical weapons in Syria, appearing to go soft on Iran's nuclear program and not standing up to Russian President Vladimir Putin over Crimea.

Then there was the disastrous rollout of Obamacare and the re-emergence of Benghazi through email revelations that the White House might have been involved in a cover-up, triggering a new set of hearings scheduled for summer.

Through it all, the Obama PR machine tried to spin all troubles away by staging feel-good events in schools and colleges and showcasing the president on the side of immigrants, poor kids and the little guy trying to earn a living. Despite all those efforts, Obama's job-approval rating in the Gallup Poll has been below 50% for nearly a year.

Then a new crisis emerged — revelations that veterans seeking health care through the Veterans Administration were waiting months to be seen and that records were falsified to hide the facts.

Sensing correctly, if not a bit late, that this scandal could not only be seriously damaging to the president, but also to congressional Democrats running in the 2014 elections, the White House rolled out the PR limo. But after five-plus years of high mileage, it is running more like a rickety fire truck manned by the Keystone Kops.

First, Obama's chief of staff went on TV to say the president was "madder than hell" about the scandal and would get to the bottom of it.

Critics continued to howl.

Five days later, on the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend, and attention on veterans saturating the news media, Obama held a news conference and vowed, "Anybody found to have manipulated or falsified records at VA facilities has to be held accountable."

The next day, a Saturday, in an apparent effort to shift attention to something more positive with regard to veterans, Obama stepped into the Rose Garden to announce that the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan would end this year. Such announcements are rarely made on Saturdays, signaling White House worry about the VA scandal.

So the PR blitz continued. On Sunday, Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan where he was photographed surrounded by cheering American troops.

The next day, Memorial Day, the president used his traditional speech at Arlington Cemetery to reiterate that the war in Afghanistan is coming to an end. More photos in the midst of veterans and their families.

A day later, he was off to West Point. And again, surrounded by uniformed military, Obama delivered a commencement speech that outlined his revised foreign policy. It was widely panned for being rambling and incoherent.

Even with those frantic efforts, the VA scandal was not going away. Obama had to do something more. He fired VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.

He followed that up last Saturday with what the PR gurus must have thought was a stroke of genius. Obama announced, again in the Rose Garden, that he secured the freedom of the only U.S. soldier held by the Taliban in exchange for five high-level Taliban terrorists held at Guantanamo.

With the soldier's parents beside him, it made good first-day headlines and pictures. But questions were quickly raised about whether the soldier released was a deserter rather than a prisoner of war, and worries that the terrorists let go might plot once again to kill Americans. Moreover, members of Congress are angry about not being told in advance of the swap, prompting a White House apology.

So the VA problems continue. And the White House is learning the hard way that sometimes it takes more than smart guys and gals and slick PR to run a country. It takes governing.

Richard Benedetto is a retired USA Today White House correspondent and columnist. He now teaches at American University and in The Fund for American Studies program at George Mason University.

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