If I were President, I'd ...

... have done this a long time ago.  From InstaPundit we learn:

I'M NOT SURPRISED AT THIS DEVELOPMENT: "The Bush administration, seeking to limit leaks of classified information, has launched initiatives targeting journalists and their possible government sources."

Members of the press are, for the most part, appalled. But having made a big deal of leaks and their alleged harm to National Security in the Plame case, they're in a poor position to complain. Bill Keller's outrage is particularly out of place, and his suggestion that the Bush Administration is waging war at home on the values we profess abroad is just a political sound-bite: There's not even a right of journalists to protect leakers under the U.S. Constitution, despite journalists' representations, and doing so has hardly been a slogan on the war on terror. The tendency of the press to conflate its own desire for guild-like special privileges with the protections of the First Amendment is one of the reasons for its decline in trust and popularity.

You know what else I'd do?  I would, in my first week in office, kick all the daily press sources out of the White House.  Not just because, or mainly because, the current American and international MSM/Old Media press corps is hostile to conservatism.  I mean, sure, it is hostile, and enemy recognition is an important part of any war, but the main reason I'd kick them out is to change the perspective of the Executive Branch.

I say the President and the entire Executive Branch should be thinking much longer-term than they are.  Part of the problem is the never ending task of feeding the 24/7/52 appetite of the modern cable and internet news monster.  Let those folks at CBS, NBC, FOX, MSNBC, ABC, WaPo, NYT, etc., go elsewhere for their daily grist.  Into their former offices, which are the property of the US Government, not the particular media squatters currently inhabiting them, bring monthly media outlets, magazines, long-term TV products, radio and bloggers.  Anyone morphing into a daily outlet gets evicted.  Any executive branch employee talking to the evictees gets fired or transferred to Diego Garcia or the Aleutian Islands. 

Under President Pedro's system, we'd all have time to actually think about the important things going on, and wouldn't spend so much national energy on the endless tempests in tea pots (anyone remember the VP's accidental shooting of a hunting partner?).   Plus, the pay-back would be sweet.  David Gregory, eat sh*t & die!

Even better, although this is probably too much to hope for, the daily news outlets would be forced to turn their attention away from an endless search for the next Presidential X-gate and might even start focusing on the non-governmental parts of our society.  I think we'd be a lot better off if the news fire hose from the White House and the rest of the Executive Branch were replaced with news of industry, science, engineering, and the world.  There is much more to life than politics, and our national discussion of politics could certainly be improved.

I have spoken.  All depart.

Comments

[pedro]

Just had to delete a lefty comment for profanity. What a surprise... profanity from a lefty! Oh, and a "koolaid" reference. The originality of thought is staggering to behold. Oh, and he missed the whole point, framing it all as "Bush sucks". Another friggin' lefty genius.