Yesterday, CBS News announced that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was hired as a CBS contributor and will be included in today’s inauguration coverage. She will join White House Senior Adviser (and Obama’s 2008 campaign manager) David Plouffe, Bob “All the President’s Men” Woodward, former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers, and Reagan’s outspoken (and frankly pissed-off) speechwriter Peggy Noonan. It should be fun. CBS announced that their crackerjack team has agreed in advance that today is Monday.
Noonan wrote in her Friday column for The Wall Street Journal about how a president approaching inauguration day should be “in his spirit, benign, embracing – unifying.” Obama is instead using the time “to show the depth of his disdain for the leaders of the other major party and, by inference, that party’s voters, which is to say more or less half the country.” Will Noonan speak her mind on air, during a day meant to be “benign, embracing, and unifying”? Will David Plouffe’s “I told you so” grin trigger conservative rage? Will Woodward reveal that a deep source has already told him the last line of Obama’s address, but that he’ll go to the grave with the secret? Rice took a swipe at Obama yesterday during her first CBS appearance, on “Face the Nation,” telling host Bob Schieffer: “Obviously, (Obama’s) relations with Congress are, on one side of the aisle, pretty poisoned right now. But also out in the country, the American people don’t want to see this divisiveness.” CBS, however, must figure that they do.