President Obama’s Governance Machine.

So today I was reading a little Al Giordano (The Field), and he had put up a great post on the upcoming work Organization of America intends to do in the coming weeks and months. Mr. Giordano is one of the most insightful bloggers/commentators out there, and one hell of a journalist…so, go read it.

After reading this post, I added my voice to the discussion with this comment:

What I’ve noticed is that a lot of people who worked with/for the Obama campaign during the election did so believing that the grassroots, community organizing style of Obama was merely a means to an end…the end being the White House. I don’t think it’s fully sunk in that his goal wasn’t to simply use that method to get to the bully pulpit, then wield the executive power the same way every President before him has done so.

That’s not who President Obama is. All these people who spent so much time deriding CNN and FOX news, complaining that they “didn’t report what was really happening on the ground” during the election (and they weren’t) now suddenly use CNN and FOX as a baseline for how Obama is fairing message-wise. It’s like spending a year building a boat of your own so you don’t have to buy a ticket on the ferry, then complaining about the ticket prices. It makes no sense.

I think one majorly overlooked aspect of this Presidency is how the “First 100 Days” theory is going to be blown out of the water. Just like the campaign took several months to ramp up, as people got trained and organized…so too will it take a little time for OFA to get a grip and shape themselves to governance – though they seem well on their way with some of the info you posted here. By the time that first 100 days is done, the “Obama campaign machine” will have morphed into the “Obama governing machine”. If people think he won’t have the ability and support to get something done on day 212, they are going to be sorely mistaken.

I don’t understand why others can’t seem to understand these things. I mean, I’m still REALLY new to all this stuff (first-time volunteer for Obama) and I still get it.

Now, I don’t know if this fits the format of OSP in terms of the type of media focused commentary we intend to give on this site…but since we’re on a bit of a lull in the OSP Videos department, I figured the more content the better. Plus, it underlines the point that the gatekeepers at the major media outlets shouldn’t be the be-all-end-all of messaging due to their inherent biases and tendency to…well, suck.

– Travis

Hey there readers! Well, reader.

So don’t you worry. While we’re in the midst of a transition period here at Open Source Pundits, please understand that the transition is about making OSP better, and not merely neglect. We’re trying to come up with a better workflow with the intention of making the videos much quicker to process. This should hopefully lead to our ability to create videos with more frequency and with more relevance.

Those who follow politics know the world can literally change overnight. The way our current videos were being processed meant that we might have several days between the initial pundit is on-air and when our response gets posted. This has already caused several videos to be shelved due to the political story becoming stale and played out. This has actually emboldened us further. The times we’ve had to shelve responses have all been because the point we wanted to argue had already come to pass. Darn President Obama and his doing the right things so quickly! Doesn’t he realize we’re trying to start a pundit smackdown show here?!?!

As you can see, I tossed up a new banner. It’s a test, and something I just threw together in about 15 minutes in photoshop. On top of a more professional process, we’d also like to get the site looking less like random/generic wordpress blog and more like an actual commentary site. Let me know what you think in the comments.

So. Stay tuned.

– Travis S.

Pundit School

If you think there isn’t a conservative corporate machine that carefully and methodically prepares agents to disseminate its talking points and frames…well, you’re wrong. Last night’s Daily Show did a piece on one tiny aspect of that machine – a media training firm imaginatively named “Media Training Worldwide” – skewering conservative ‘commentator’ Kevin James in the process:

Link.

And here’s the website for Media Training Worldwide, in case you were wondering what two guys in a 500 square foot space masquerading behind quintessential corporate veneer looked like.

Slumps and Gains

As Travis and I expected, the days leading up to the election left us with little time to indulge in this little side project. I had meant to write a post signaling our absence, but got caught up and consumed by the final stretch of the election (and unexpected employment) earlier than I anticipated. After the election but before Travis and I could refocus on this, we were both again distracted by our day jobs, from which we’re only now emerging as we head into the Thanksgiving holiday.

But we’ll be back, once the turkey is carved and there’s nothing left but that turkey soup that nobody would want to eat even if you weren’t sick of all things turkey.

In the meantime, here’s an excellent diary on DailyKos by James Boyce about his recent appearance as a pundit on MSNBC.

-Brian

The High Bar

There are good examples and there are good examples. And then there’s the gold standard:

Rock on, Rachel.

– Brian

Addendum to Pat Buchanan’s Crap

In the last OSP video we did, there simply wasn’t enough time for me to respond to all of Pat Buchanan’s points and stay within the original allotted time. So I went back and made a little addendum.

OSP Video: The Palin Factor

Source Video available here.

If you create your own, be sure to post it as a video response on the release video.

– Travis

Good Examples: Ari Melber

Yet another clip of a great pundit laying down the law.  Yes, it’s again an advocate for Obama.  While I do intend to use Republican’s as good examples as well, honestly the McCain campaign is so off the handle at the moment it’s really just tough to find a pundit who does a solid job of making a point for McCain that isn’t already contradicted by something from another recent interview/pundit.  Message discipline is another key aspect of being a pundit.

In this clip, Ari Melber from “The Nation” magazine takes on JP Freire from “The American Spectator”:

The biggest reason Melber wins this battle is simple, he calls out Freire when Freire stretches the word “hate” to automatically mean “race”.  It’s a classic move intended to shift the conversation from the campaigns actual words and actions, and moves it to a field of implied intentions.  If successful, the entire conversation becomes empty rhetoric, and renders any actual response mute.

Melber calls Freire on it, and then takes him to task for the point he was originally intending to make.  But counter-punching like this, you notice that Melber’s on-screen time to attack is nearly doubled because he made his point, then deflected Freire’s attempt to change the subject, and had a full second turn on camera to reiterate his point.  Great work by Melber, because once Freire was off balance, it was over for that portion of the conversation.

The second portion…well Melber just clobbered McCain, and it’s probably a good thing Freire didn’t have to respond.

On a separate note, Ari Melber is the second great pundit to come from The Nation magazine (the first being Chris Hayes).  They seem to teach them well there.  I’ve never actually read The Nation, but if their level of skill for punditry follows to their articles I may find myself checking it out.

– Travis

[UPDATE] – As Mr. Freire has kindly mentioned in the comments, he was not acting as a McCain campaign spokesmen.  I should point out that while my post may have implied this, I do not believe either Melber or Freire were there “on behalf” of the campaigns.  I’m sorry if there was any confusion.  I’ll try to be better in the future.  -Travis

Take your shot.

Short post, just to give all you (eight or so) fans of the site a chance to try your hand at this whole punditry thing.

A quick update for those who haven’t travelled to The Rules section (plus it should be updated):

We take a recorded clip of news punditry, then modify it by blacking out the pundit.  This is the “pre” video, which I’m posting below.  Then that clip is sent to one of our Open Source Pundits, who then watches it and records their responses.  We try to do it as “live” as possible.  As Brian noted below, this first one he did several “takes”, however I think he should have pointed out that really this was due to presentation issues (and adding in a joke or two) and not due to changing answers.  His responses were basically unchanged from the first try to the final product.

So, now I post the pre and repost the post for all to see, compare, and comment on.

Feel free to use your webcam to record your own response!  Be sure to post it in the final release’s video thread.

– Travis

Gearing Up

So we’ve produced our first published attempt of open source punditry. I don’t intend to opine about my own performance, since really, can their be anything more pompous than a fake pundit punditing their own performance?

Of course, it should be obvious that, at least in this case, we’ve already broken our self imposed rule about not viewing the clips before hand. But I’ll invoke Barbarossa and claim they’re more like guidelines than actual rules. Besides, all bets are off when there’s a joke to be made.

Ultimately, we did several passes, sometimes for technical issues, sometimes for performance ones. It’s obvious and I shouldn’t have been surprised, but trying to give a response with a meaningful position is much harder in a shorter period of time and even after a try or two, I found myself running over.

But, overall, I have to say I’m pretty pleased. There’s still a lot of work we want to do to bring it up to the standards we’ve set for ourselves, which is something distinctly above your typical webcam Youtube responses. And we’ve done a little of that so far, but we still have great strides to make in audio quality, general production value, speed and regularity of posting, and relevance of our videos to the issues of the day. And of course, getting that perfect, snappy answer the first time, every time.

Some of that requires working out cheap, do it yourself methods that can replicate studio production values and setting up our TV/computer recording device so we’re not left scouring Youtube for suitable clips. So these are the things we’ll be working on in the near future. We hope you’ll stay tuned.

– Brian