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Pay2Play Connolly’s Sources Are “Mystified”

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Before I get into the jist of this story, note two things.

First, Ceci Connolly, the reporter the WaPo was selling in their Pay2Play salons, is one of the bylined authors. (In fact, Connolly was the one recruited to convince Nancy Ann DeParle–Obama’s health care czar and the recipient of millions for serving on the board of corrupt health care companies–to attend, which sort of makes Connolly a broker rather than a reporter.)

And second, Connolly and her co-author egregiously break the WaPo’s rules on anonymity, which Ombud Andy Alexander reviewed just a few days ago.

Those are the two details I’d use to answer Aravosis’ puzzle–are these guys lying or idiots?

Neither. They’re trying to pivot their failure back onto progressives.

Here are the anonymous quotes that, for some reason, Ceci and friend couldn’t see fit to present in a way that accorded with the WaPo’s anonymity rules.

President Obama’s advisers acknowledged Tuesday that they were unprepared for the intraparty rift that occurred over the fate of a proposed public health insurance program, a firestorm that has left the White House searching for a way to reclaim the initiative on the president’s top legislative priority.

Administration officials insisted that they have not shied away from their support for a public option to compete with private insurance companies, an idea they said Obama still prefers to see in a final bill.

But at a time when the president had hoped to be selling middle-class voters on how insurance reforms would benefit them, the White House instead finds itself mired in a Democratic Party feud over an issue it never intended to spotlight.

"I don’t understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo," said a senior White House adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We’ve gotten to this point where health care on the left is determined by the breadth of the public option. I don’t understand how that has become the measure of whether what we achieve is health-care reform."

"It’s a mystifying thing," he added. "We’re forgetting why we are in this."

Another top aide expressed chagrin that a single element in the president’s sprawling health-care initiative has become a litmus test for whether the administration is serious about the issue.

"It took on a life of its own," he said. [my emphasis]

Remember how we got to the stupid co-ops. Read more →

Ceci Connolly’s Pay2Play Puff Piece

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The WaPo just doesn’t get it, I guess. Just days after it was revealed that Ceci Connolly was the "Play" in the WaPo’s Pay2Play dinners, she’s out with an article based in significant part on quotes from those invited to the Pay2Play dinner.

There’s Nancy-Ann DeParle, who was invited to the dinner.

Early on, Obama and health czar Nancy-Ann DeParle discussed the parallels with Johnson and creation of the health program that serves 45 million seniors and people with disabilities today. Just as Johnson gave legendary lawmaker Wilbur Mills (D-Ark.) latitude to craft the Medicare bill, Obama has asked Congress to write the health-care revamp legislation. 

[snip]

In private meetings or phone calls with legislators, Obama "has an easy familiarity," said DeParle, who often joins the sessions. "He has a way of getting right to the heart of the matter. He’s pushing and prodding and giving no ground."

When the president leans back in his chair, flashing a broad smile, "he is very persuasive," she said. After he listens to lawmakers’ concerns, he often replies: "There’s no reason to delay."

As a reminder of the blueprint they have settled on, DeParle keeps a Johnson quotation under glass on her desk, just above the keyboard. It reads: "There is but one way for a president to deal with the Congress, and that is continuously, incessantly, and without interruption."

There’s Olympia Snowe, who was invited to the dinner.

Obama has lavished attention on moderate GOP senators such as Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) and Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), who provide the seal of bipartisanship he covets. His message to Snowe, like many others, is that "this is his highest domestic priority, and he wants to get it accomplished and done this year," she said. "I indicated to him it was important to be flexible on the time frame and on trying to draft the substance of legislative policy."

Snowe and Rockefeller praised Obama for his deference to the legislative branch, but both signaled he may soon have to wade into the messier details of the bill.

"At some point, the president’s going to have to play a pivotal role in shaping what happens," Snowe said. "It is crucial."

Read more →

Howie Kurtz’s Latest Story: Weymouth Defends Pay2Play Scheme

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picture-115.pngHowie Kurtz worked all day yesterday trying to come up with a narrative that would make the WaPo’s Pay2Play scheme look less damning. His latest effort is notable for several reasons:

  • He killed the anonymous quotations from Weymouth and Brauchli
  • With those anonymous quotes, he also killed any description of what the Pay2Play dinners were supposed to be
  • He let Weymouth spend 356 words claiming "everyone does it"
  • He gave a list of the planned attendees

Nevertheless, the bottom line of the story is that Katharine Weymouth still appears to defend the concept of Pay2Play in her living room.

Killing the anonymous quotations from Weymouth and Brauchli

Perhaps Howie killed the anonymous quotes because, in an article trying to defend the WaPo’s "journalistic integrity" and "integrity of the newsroom" it just looked bad to grant the WaPo’s Publisher and Executive Editor anonymity to blame another employee and make vague claims about what the real intent here was. Perhaps Howie killed those quotes because I was already harping on him for them. But as I pointed out yesterday, Howie granted anonymity to WaPo executives who were almost certainly WaPo publisher Weymouth and WaPo Executive Editor Brauchli so they could blame this all on Charles Pelton and make claims about what the Pay2Play Dinners were supposed to be.

Two Post executives familiar with the planning, who declined to be identified discussing internal planning, said the fliers appear to be the product of overzealous marketing executives. The fliers were overseen by Charles Pelton, a Post executive hired this year as a conference organizer. He was not immediately available for comment. 

[snip]

Weymouth knew of the plans to host small dinners at her home and to charge lobbying and trade organizations for participation. But, one of the executives said, she believed that there would be multiple sponsors, to minimize any appearance of charging for access, and that the newsroom would be in charge of the scope and content of any dinners in which Post reporters and editors participated. [my emphasis]

Those anonymous quotations are now gone. Howie replaced the first with on the record quotes directly from Pelton, falling on his sword for not vetting the fliers (but not, it should be noted, for the plan itself).

The fliers were approved by a top Post marketing executive, Charles Pelton, who said it was "a big mistake" on his part and that he had done so "without vetting it with the newsroom."

Read more →