(Charles Dharapak/ ASSOCIATED PRESS ) - From left to right: White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer; Deputy Communications Director Jen Psaki; Senior Adviser David Plouffe; and Press Secretary Jay Carney stand in the East Room as President Barack Obama holds a news conference at the White House in Washingtonn on June 29, 2011.
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — Welcome to the “Jen and Jay Show,” the latest iteration of the White House news briefing.
Known as “gaggles” when they take place on Air Force One, the daily briefings became a two-person road show over the summer when President Obama hit the campaign trail in earnest and petite, 33-year-old redhead Jennifer Psaki climbed aboard alongside Jay Carney to answer the growing volume of campaign-related questions coming from the press.
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In the waning days of the campaign, the duo has given the briefings the feel of a vaudeville act: lighthearted and entertaining but also well rehearsed — and deadly for Republican Mitt Romney.
Straight man Carney, who is 47, a fluent Russian speaker and former Washington bureau chief for Time magazine, waxes serious about Syria or Libya — and then looks on with amusement while Psaki plays the double role of girl-next-door and tart-tongued attack dog.
Asked recently to comment on Romney’s accusation that Obama would lie during the debates, Psaki said: “If Mitt Romney were Pinocchio, his nose would be reaching from Virginia to Ohio with the number of lies he’s told.”
A reporter even asked Carney if he was starting to feel like a bystander now that fewer questions were aimed at him. “Not at all,” Carney offered cautiously. “I enjoy listening to my colleague field your questions. It’s most comforting.”
In some ways, the Jen and Jay Show reflects the small-bore tone of the 2012 election. Obama isn’t so much promising hope or change this year; he’s asking for more time — and relentlessly tearing down Romney so he doesn’t look like a better choice. Alongside Carney’s policy-oriented spiels about the European debt crisis or the unemployment rate, Psaki spends much of her time going after Romney: scoffing at him, needling him, mocking him. She is the traveling hit woman of the Obama campaign.
Commenting on Romney’s summer trip abroad, during which he was jeered by the British press for criticizing security preparations for the Olympics, she offered: “The only person who has offended Europe more is probably Chevy Chase.”
And about PBS’s request that Obama take down an ad featuring Big Bird — in response to Romney’s suggestion that he would cut federal funding for public broadcasting — she retorted: “It doesn’t change the fact that there’s only one candidate in this race who is going to continue to fight for Big Bird and Elmo, and he is riding on this plane.”
Psaki’s one-liners are sometimes downright weird, as when she channeled David Lynch about Romney’s “lack of ideas,” which reminded her of an empty pool with “dead leaves and trees in it.” And there was Carney again, chuckling with the reporters and observing:
“I endorse language as creative and descriptive as that used by my friend and colleague.”
Moving up?
If Psaki’s style suggests a less consequential job than that of her traveling straight man, she is viewed widely as one of two top contenders to replace him, the other being Carney’s deputy, Josh Earnest. By several accounts, Carney has no plans to leave, nor is anyone pressuring him to do so. But the job of White House press secretary has a high burnout rate — and a lucrative landing pad in the private sector.
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