Chuck Todd is a tool

Yesterday on Rachel Maddow's show on MSNBC, NBC Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd revealed that he was soliciting questions from ordinary citizens through newsvine.com and NBC's blog FirstRead in prep for tonight's press conference. Why?

Well, you know, it comes in this sense. You know, you‘ve heard about the bubble. Everybody talks about the Washington, D.C. bubble, the beltway bubble. I talk about what I call the Amtrak corridor bubble, which is that New York to Washington, D.C. part where it sometimes it feels like that‘s the only part of our world that we think about, and that‘s Wall Street and Washington, which, of course, the nexus of which dominates everything these days.

And it's —- it just sort of started. You know, this isn't a new thing to have reporters solicit ideas out there for the public. But it started just hearing questions from my mom and some friends out there who aren't very politically attuned, asking various things about the president's housing plan to me or asking about various things about the economic bailout, and saying, well, what about this and what about that?

And I'm thinking, well, you know what, this press conference tomorrow night, we better be asking questions that people are sitting there watching on TV going, well, I hope they ask my question, I hope they ask what I'm curious about. (emphasis mine)

I'll leave it to others to note how non-sensical it was for Chuck Todd to complain that the American people haven't "sacrificed" enough. I'll also let you note for yourself whether that "sacrifice" question is one that you were "curious about."

What kill me is that Chuck Todd (and many of NBC's other Smart And Serious Media Stars) have been asking this same question since before the inauguration.
Chuck Todd, speaking on NBC's Meet the Press on January 18:

When he did his speech for the stimulus package last week, I thought it was one of his surprisingly weaker performances. It was very dry, it didn't ask for any sacrifice from the, the country, it was all about government. And it was an odd thing, because it was supposed to be a speech that was to the American people, getting them – to buy in on this, and he didn't ask for any buy-in. Now, maybe they were waiting till the inaugural address to do that, but I think that that is the number one thing a lot of Obama's supporters on the intellectual side of this are all wondering; "OK, Bush didn't do this after 9/11. We're counting on you to do this. How are you going to do it and how are you going to make that real?"

This was after, during that same program, David (The Press is Always Right) Gregory asked Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, "Does he want to call on the American people for sacrifice, given the state of our economy?"

EMANUEL: Well, I think--well, it's--well, it's not just the economy. This goes larger than the economy, David. It goes to a, a values system that, that has held us well for 200-plus years, a values system that's about responsibility, about being held accountable, and that all of us have an obligation. So it's beyond just--although sacrifice is important in restoring the greatness of the economy, it's to a values system that is so much a definition of who we are as a country.

[...]

GREGORY: But Democrats were always critical of the Bush tax cuts, for instance, which were the first time that, that taxes were cut during a war. There's a $1.2 trillion deficit forecast for 2009, as you well know. There's a political element to this as well, and that is that the president-elect campaigned on a middle class tax cut. Now, the projections are if this were to become permanent tax cut beyond two years that would be part of the stimulus, that could be a $710 billion tax cut at least, at least.

EMANUEL: Mm-hmm.

GREGORY: Is that the responsible thing to do on top of the debt burden that we talked about, on top of the deficit I just outlined?

EMANUEL: Look, first of all, let's be clear that the middle class didn't really participate in the tax cuts that you talked about in the last eight years; that they have worked harder, earned less and are paying more. And the middle class have the fundamental different approach.

GREGORY: Right.

EMANUEL: And that's the change we want to bring to Washington as president.

GREGORY: But an additional $700 billion?

EMANUEL: President Obama's been very clear, you cannot have a strong economy that does not have a strong middle class. And the, the approach has been to provide the middle class with a tax cut, and also to start getting the economy moving again by making critical investments. That's why we want to create three and a half million jobs. (emphasis all mine, again)

Asked. Answered. But does Chuck Todd move it along and ask the President "various things about the... housing plan" or "various things about the economic bailout?" Nope. Instead, here goes Todd again, wringing his pearls because Obama hasn't broken his campaign pledge to cut middle class taxes (and, incidentally, to raise the taxes on people who are pulling in salaries similar to Chuck Todd's and David Gregory's), and instead told people who may lose their jobs/homes/savings any day now -- if they haven't already -- that they need to sacrifice more. Here goes Chuck Todd again, after soliciting questions from the American people to get an "outside of the Beltway" perspective.

Like I said, Chuck Todd is a tool.