President Obama shared his thoughts on the Shirley Sherrod brouhaha for the first time on Good Morning America today, reiterating Robert Gibbs’s contention that the “media culture” is sometimes just too powerful to resist.
[Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack] jumped the gun, partly because we now live in this media culture where something goes up on YouTube or a blog and everybody scrambles. And I’ve told my team and I told my agencies that we have to make sure that we’re focusing on doing the right thing instead of what looks to be politically necessary at that very moment. We have to take our time and and think these issues through.
It seems odd that this is something people who are apparently competent enough to run vast government agencies need to be reminded of “Listen people, from now on, let’s try and think about whether we should be firing someone as opposed to just doing so out of sheer panic” but there you have it.
’GMA’ Transcript: President Obama on Financial Reform, Elizabeth Warren and Shirley Sherrod [GMA/ABC News]
It seems odd that this is something people who are apparently competent enough to run vast government agencies need to be reminded of “Listen people, from now on, let’s try and think about whether we should be firing someone as opposed to just doing so out of sheer panic” but there you have it.
’GMA’ Transcript: President Obama on Financial Reform, Elizabeth Warren and Shirley Sherrod [GMA/ABC News]
