Minding the gaffe machine
Updated on 07 January 2009
Is VP-elect Joe Biden's tendency to talk from the hip the reason why so many journalists have been lined up for jobs in the Obama administration?
The man who said this summer that Joe Biden is "incredibly prone to say the wrong thing" is now his director of communications.
Time magazine Washington bureau chief Jay Carney was hired by the Obama transition team last month to keep an eye on the gaffe-machine - who's already been making his first blunders.
Yes, just moments after he was sworn in for his seventh senate term - the VP-elect has been sharing his thoughts with the press, plunging straight in there to criticise his boss about picking Leon Panetta as head of the CIA. Biden said he supported the selection - but claimed that not telling the senate intelligence committee first had been a mistake.
"I'm still a senate man and I always think this way. I think it's always good to talk to the requisite members of congress," Biden went on. "I think it was just a mistake."
Wait - there's more. As per standard operating procedure, Biden's office had carefully concealed details about his forthcoming trip to various trouble spots overseas. But Joe couldn't stop himself from telling all. "This will be my God-knows-how-many trips, I guess my 10th or 11th trip into Iraq," he revealed, "and I don't know how many times in Afghanistan and Pakistan." So much for security concerns.
Dr Sanjay Gupta, in line for a top job with the new administration, even provides medical segments for repeats of hospital soap ER.
And according to Politico, there's also a frisson of disapproval about the way Biden apparently compared the economic turmoil to the 9/11 attacks, in a closed door meeting with pols on the hill. A spokeswoman was wheeled out to explain. What the VP-elect really meant, she said, was how congress "came together and worked together for the sake of the country".
But perhaps that's why team Obama are getting as many journalists as possible on side. As well as Carney (who's married to ABC's Claire Shipman, by the way), some on-screen talent has been lined up for a top job.
Dr Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical reporter, is top of the list for the post. The network confirmed he'd discussed it with Barack Obama last year and had been approached by the transition team. As well as his reporting duties, Gupta anchors a show called Vital Signs, and even provides medical segments for repeats of the nation's favourite hospital soap, ER.
Another unusual choice by the incoming administration, but the good doctor has hands-on experience in his field: he's a qualified neurosurgeon. And when he was embedded with navy medics in Iraq and Kuwait, CNN says he didn't just report on events, he worked on casualties, carrying out brain surgery five times.
Perhaps he could even provide another check on the wandering mind of Joe Biden. But that could be well beyond the call of duty.
