Gibbs is a thoroughly non telegenic presence. I've heard his briefings on POTUS 08, but this is the first time I've seen the guy and I'm now both visually and auditorily underwhelmed. This unfortunate exchange with Jake Tapper becomes an epic fail of presidential representation when he jumps it off by rising to Tapper's bait with a snarky comment about Tapper knowing the President's opinions and then had to back down, ultimately running from the confrontation by answering someone else's question. Lamer.
This transparency issue should get handled by Gibbs. Transparency doesn't mean that the press core gets access to anything and everything they want, when they want it. Thats just anarchy. Gibbs is foolish to let himself and by extension his boss, the President, take crap about transparency without definining the terms of the debate more forcefully.
Tony Snow would not have backed down, and more to the point, Snow would have forcefully and energetically put forward a defensible standard for transparency and how the administration was living up to it. Gibbs lame performance here allows the otherwise gibbering press core to continue to snark at the administration about transparency in the most trite and shallow way. Obama needs a Tony Snow who won't take crap from the press and is willing and able to go toe to toe with a full of itself press core, who lets face it, ask some of the most asinine and trite questions imaginable. Snow would never have invited this confrontation in this manner and if he had, he would have rhetorically rammed Tapper's snark back down his throat. Replace Gibbs now.
