Rachel Sklar: Jake Tapper wants to be this administration's David Gregory

[wndycty]

Who's Afraid of Jake Tapper?
ABC's tenacious reporter is already proving to be the new star of the White House press pack.
by Rachel Sklar

Last night’s prime time presidential address may have been like prom to the White House press corps, but every high-schooler knows that reputations are made in the schoolyard. And for the freshman class of 44, the first skirmish happened last Thursday in the White House Briefing room between presidential Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and ABC’s Jake Tapper.

Tapper, the network’s ambitious, telegenic Senior White House Correspondent has made a name for himself as a tough questioner, but last Thursday, Tapper’s tenacity didn’t just get the story—it became the story, in a sudden, testy exchange with Gibbs that was instantly snapped up by blogs, posted on YouTube and rebroadcast for good measure on Fox News’s Hannity.
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There’s another chair that Tapper may be trying to fill: David Gregory’s. No less than three separate Washington political reporters spontaneously compared him to Gregory, who made his name being a thorn in the side of various White House Press Secretaries. “I think it’s safe to say that he's calculated, meaning that if he's being tough, it's likely because he sat down one day to say, ‘I want to be this administration's David Gregory,’" said one colleague on the D.C. political circuit. (Note where Gregory ended up.) Others have also compared him to Sam Donaldson, whose scrappy briefing room questioning is still legendary. “ works really hard, he's really smart, and he does have good questions that you just can't dismiss as showboating,” said another D.C.-based political reporter who has known Tapper for years. And while more than one other person also used the word “showboating,” a briefing room colleague was a little more zen: “It's too early to judge anyone... And I wouldn't get too worked up over the press briefings. Judge all of us on the reporting, analysis, and packages.”

It should be noted here that Gibbs is not exactly a shrinking violet: He may look unassuming, but he knows his way around a body check (let’s not forget that he was once the guy who ran a commercial comparing Howard Dean to Osama bin Laden). “Gibbs' style is to be a little sarcastic and push back—he's aggressive and combative,” said a frequent member of Obama’s traveling press corps. “He uses the same strategies the Bush press secretaries used—make a joke, or find a way to be dismissive of the questioner. But Jake’s not easily dismissed.”
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-02-10/whos-afraid-of-jake-tapper/full/

[WinkyDink]

1. I guess it's all about show-biz and not reporting for some of these men.

[That Is Quite Enough]

2. He wants to dance and be a prick?

Whatever. I think he has most of that down.

[ErinBerin84]

3. and go figure

I'm not a fan of either Tapper or Rachel Sklar, lol.

It does seem like it's a three man way race btwen Ed Henry, Chucky T, and Tapper for the Gregory thing.

[Spazito]

4. LOL, looks like Tapper and Todd are gonna have to fight it out to see...

which one can be the bigger jerk. So far, imo, they are about even so they haven't reached douchebag Gregory status yet.

[TeamJordan23]

5. What question did he ask last night? NM

[MadBadger]

7. The one about what the signs would be if this recovery plan were working.

Basically asking Obama what success would be.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

6. So, does that mean he gets to be Axelrod's back up dancer. nt

[MADem]

8. Well, he'd better be able to speak a second language, like Gregory did in France!!!

All of these guys PALED in comparison to Sam Donaldson, though--no one could bellow like Sam. Even deaf Reagan had to acknowledge that he could hear the guy!

He sure has come a long way since he dated Monica Lewinsky:

And to be brutally honest, I got with her because I figured that behind her initial aggressiveness lurked an easy, perhaps winning, bit of no-frills hookup. Nothing of the kind happened, so either I am eminently resistible (which is certainly within the realm of possibility) or Monica is not the tart she is being made out to be.

Yeah, maybe if I had the Marines under my command, things would have been different, but I'm not so sure. Power does weird things to people. More than once, I have found myself laughing my ass off and nodding in agreement while some fading star has held forth on something I could care less about. Offended me, even. Does that make me a nitwit, a himbo waiting to happen? I think it just makes me toweringly average in Washington, just another creature who is here because this is where the national vat of power lies, and I'm sitting here waiting for my bowlful....

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=14334