Owning the Moment
BY Nancy Scola | Monday, March 22 2010
Credit: The White HouseThe White House tends to let some time pass before posting photos to its Flickr feed. That's both, it seems, because of in-house logistics around getting them from the White House photographer to the web, and because, at least in some cases, professional consideration for the working photographers covering the events. Not so last night. The House of Representatives passed the main health care package at 11:30pm ET, and by about ten minutes after midnight the White House was emailing around the link to the photo above. This is Barack Obama set on "thrilled," it seems. Anyway, it's a nice way to own the moment. It's leading WashingtonPost.com right now, at least. You also saw Barack Obama's Twitter avatar also celebrating the vote with a simple tweet of "Yes We Can."
In large part, of course, the question now becomes this bigger question of how the White House and his allies can starting "selling" the health care bill for political gain, or, in the worst case for them, to at least to preserve against losses. Organizing for America, which is suddenly being reconsidered as a viable, useful organization after a year of perhaps overheated consideration earlier on, is in a nice, for them, position. Selling health care reform will, more much then the bill's progress was, resemble a political campaign. And running political campaigns is something more innately in the DNA of the organization than pushing through legislation was.