Can't Anybody Play This Game?

It sure looks to me like Barack Obama really needs a new and very different press secretary--one who can stay on message...

What Robert Gibbs should think, and should say:

We hear the frustration. We understand it. We are frustrated too. Large pieces of our agenda have been completely stalled by procedural obstacles in the legislature. Large pieces have been enacted in imperfect form. We agree: the glass is not full. The economy, while improving, is still in bad shape. Global warming is unaddressed. Guantanamo Bay is still open. But while the glass is not full, it is definitely not empty. A realistic look should convince anyone that the glass is much more than half full...

What Robert Gibbs thinks and says:

Sam Youngman, The Hill: Robert Gibbs blasted liberal naysayers, whom he said would never regard anything the president did as good enough. “I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy. The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.” Of those who complain that Obama caved to centrists on issues such as healthcare reform, Gibbs said: “They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”... While visibly frustrated, Gibbs did not specifically name any of the White Houses’s liberal detractors by name...

Robert Gibbs is supposed to be a professional, ruthlessly effective at being on message all the time. I see no signs of it.

If Robert Gibbs cannot stay on message when talking to reporters from The Hill, he needs to go.