Dana Milbank spanks President Obama and HuffPo's Nico Pitney for conspiring to provide the president a chance to answer a question from an Iranian at Tuesday's press conference. Milbank often is spot-on in his depictions of Washington's follies and foibles, but he may have misguided his outrage on this one.

Milbank accurately notes that the White House gave Pitney a strong indication that he would be called on at the press conference. That does sound as if the White House was planting a question. And here's how Milbank describes what happened:

Pitney asked his arranged question. Reporters looked at one another in amazement at the stagecraft they were witnessing. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel grinned at the surprised TV correspondents in the first row.

The use of planted questioners is a no-no at presidential news conferences, because it sends a message to the world -- Iran included -- that the American press isn't as free as advertised. But yesterday wasn't so much a news conference as it was a taping of a new daytime drama, "The Obama Show."

A bad message to Iran? Oh my. But White House aides, having noticed that Pitney has been live-blogging the Iranian crisis, had asked him if he would solicit a question from Iranians for Obama. This was not exactly the same thing as arranging for a specific question--or even a sympathetic one. Obama didn't know what Pitney would ask, and Ptiney's query, as it turned out, was a tough one. Obama didn't really answer it:

PITNEY: We solicited questions last night from people who are still courageous enough to be communicating online, and one of them wanted to ask you this: Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad? And if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn't that a betrayal of what the demonstrators there are working towards?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, we didn't have international observers on the ground. We can't say definitively what exactly happened at polling places throughout the country. What we know is that a sizeable percentage of the Iranian people themselves, spanning Iranian society, consider this election illegitimate. It's not an isolated instance -- a little grumbling here or there. There is significant questions about the legitimacy of the election.

And so ultimately the most important thing for the Iranian government to consider is legitimacy in the eyes of its own people, not in the eyes of the United States. And that's why I've been very clear: Ultimately, this is up to the Iranian people to decide who their leadership is going to be and the structure of their government.

Obama dodged. He did not state under what conditions he would accept an Ahmadinejad victory, and he did not say whether engaging with Ahmadinejad at some point would be a betrayal of the Iranian opposition. I bet that Iranian was disappointed--if he was able to learn of Obama's response.

Granted, there was something artificial about all this. The White House spurred Pitney to ask a specific sort of question and essentially told him he'd be called on. But, then, there is something artificial about the entire enterprise of presidential press conferences.

Before a press conference begins, the White House decides on the dozen or so reporters the president will call on. The rest of us need not be there at all. And while the White House does not tell journalists they are on this golden list, it's fair to assume that the wire service reporters and the major television network correspondents will be chosen. So about half of the reporters on the list, more or less, have advance notice every time the president holds a news conference. And this list isn't very long, given that Obama usually uses a question as an opportunity to recite, at length, his talking points (as eloquent as they are) on the matter at hand.

At presidential press conferences, there ought to be more spontaneity, more to and fro, and, more important, more questions from a wider range of questioners. (Spin a wheel?) That's the issue, not Nico-gate.
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By the way, I'm filling in for blogger Kevin Drum for a few days. Feel free to check out my postings on Jake Tapper and Mick Jagger and climate change.

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This was first posted at MotherJones.com....

During the White House press conference Wednesday night marking the hundredth day of his historic presidency, Barack Obama was asked not one question about the Afghanistan war or the multiple-trillion-dollar federal bailout of the financial system. He managed to tout his many achievements--passing the $800 billion stimulus package, winning congressional approval of budget that devotes record amounts to health care and clean energy, initiating the withdrawal of troops in Iraq, signing legislation to boost the number of children covered by health insurance, banning the use of torture--without having to explain or justify perhaps the two most controversial (and perhaps problematic) big-ticket items of his high-wire presidency. Was that just good luck?

These one hundred days have been something a blur--or, at least a policy blur. There is too much to keep track off, too much to juggle.

The questions put to Obama covered a wide range of substantial matters. (Nothing on the Air Force One fly-over of New York or the dog, though Jeff Zeleny of The New York Times did ask what about the presidency has "enchanted" Obama.)

My take on President Obama's first speech, first posted at MotherJones.com....

With over a million exhilarated Americans filling the space between the civic shrines of the Capitol and the Washington Monument on the National Mall, President Barack Obama, in the first American inaugural address delivered by a black man, acknowledged the enthusiasm and hope he and his victory have inspired, but his speech was not overly celebratory. Instead, he attempted to guide the nation into what promises, due to circumstances heretofore beyond his control, to be a somber time and a trying presidency.

Underneath clear skies on a crisp, slightly-colder-than-usual day, the 44th president began, "I stand here today humbled by the task before us." He noted that he had just become one of the few presidents who takes office "amidst gathering clouds and raging storms." He outlined the obvious problems his administration faces: war, a weak economy (partly due to the "greed and irresponsibility" of "some"), job losses, businesses closed, homes lost, a broken health care system, and failing schools.

Vowing to meet these daunting challenges, the new president offered not policy details but, yes, hope. He praised the unsung workers (including slaves) of America's past, "obscure in their labor," who built this country. But, he added, the current challenges "will not be met easily or in a short span of time." He maintained that Americans "must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America." And that renewal, he said, would demand "bold and swift" action, including the building of roads and bridges, electric grids and digital lines. It also would entail reforming health care, developing alternative energy, and revitalizing schools. He acknowledged this is a big job.

Obama portrayed his response to the moment at hand as ideology-free: "What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them--that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works--whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified." Obama can try to depict his agenda as post-ideological, but these words do convey the opposite sentiment of Ronald Reagan's first inaugural address: "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." And Obama did challenge another fundamental precept of conservatism when he noted that the free market cannot always be trusted: "without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control." This was a speech of progressive notions--without explicitly championing them.

As I wrote yesterday, it's hard to depict Representative Rahm Emanuel, who has been picked by President-elect Barack Obama to be his White House chief of staff, as an agent of change. After all, Emanuel has been a Washington player for years and, perhaps more important, a leading New Democrat, who, when he served in the Clinton White House, advocated small, modest policy measures over sweeping change. Ezra Klein is also ambivalent about the Rahmization of the Obama White House.

Emanuel, a highly effective partisan, is indeed a guy who gets things done. As head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he led the House Democrats back to majority status in the 2006 elections. Yet his selection--the first pick of the Obama administration--could be the wrong signal. I would have advised--not that anyone is asking--the Obama camp to open up with a more bipartisan (or less partisan) appointment, if only for show.

When I attended Obama's final campaign rally at Manassas, Virginia, on Monday night, I asked Obama supporters in the massive crowd what they wanted to see in an Obama presidency. There was a pattern in the replies: the older white guys all said they wanted Obama to move beyond partisan confrontations and remake the political culture of Washington. That is, they really were moved by his campaign trail vow to bring a new kind of politics to the nation's capital. So Obama ought to take steps that meet that rhetoric darn fast.

Appointing Emanuel obviously doesn't fall into such a category. And there's this: OpenSecrets reports that Emanuel was the "was the top House recipient in the 2008 election cycle of contributions from hedge funds, private equity firms and the larger securities/investment industry--not the most popular of industries in the current economy." The campaign money watchdog group notes: