White House Creates Office Position For Dealing with Unfavorable Press

From Fishbowl NY:

The White House has named Jesse Lee to a new position within its communications department titled Director of Progressive Media & Online Response. According to The Huffington Post, Lee will essentially be responsible for building up Obama’s online presence as he prepares for his reelection bid, and squashing any negative stories:

The post is a new one for this White House. Rapid response has usually been outsourced to the Democratic National Committee (DNC), if not done on an ad-hoc basis by administration officials. And it signals that the White House will be adopting a more aggressive defense of the president and his policies as his re-election campaign gears up.

This wouldn’t bother me if this was a political candidate who wanted to go after bad press during the campaign, in fact, I would expect it. But for the government to do it? How much of public funds go to this salary? If a Republican president created a taxpayer-funded position to essentially promote his incumbent candidacy via the media, there would be hell to pay.

Nice to see that Lee is having fun with it. His account is described as an “official White House Twitter account,” by the way.