Stephanie Cutter, Obama's worst press secretary

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Five Reasons Stephanie Cutter is Obama’s Worst Press Secretary
Obama for America’s deputy campaign manager has become a major force in the 2012 campaign—and that may not be a good thing
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BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
August 20, 2012 3:25 pm

Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter has become one of the most recognizable faces of the Obama reelection campaign—but that is not necessarily a good thing for the president.

A cavalcade of televised blunders has marked Cutter’s stint as a prominent Obama surrogate.

What’s more, Glenn Thrush reports in the e-book “Obama’s Last Stand: Playbook 2012” that Cutter’s tenure has not been smooth in Chicago, either.

“Aggresiveness and persistence were Cutter’s calling cards,” Thrush writes. “Even people who liked her found her tough to work with in the heat of a campaign.”

Arguments between Cutter and senior campaign adviser David Axelrod have become so heated, in fact, that the two “were barely on speaking terms” after Axelrod perceived Cutter “being too aggressive” and “overstepping her authority as a deputy,” according to aides.

Cutter’s rise has occurred despite the fact that she is a reliable source for campaign blunders.

Here are five of Cutter’s biggest gaffes so far this year:
1. Cutter conceived the ill-received Obama rally on the steps of the Massachusetts State House.

Cutter was the architect of campaign senior adviser David Axelrod’s disastrous May press conference in Boston, where Romney supporters heckled and rattled Axelrod, Glenn Thrush reports in his e-book “Obama’s Last Stand: Playbook 2012”:

“Cutter, with her deep connections in the Boston media market, pushed for a bold show of force, a powerful visual, proposing a rally by Democrats on the steps of the Massachusetts State House. That would bring the fight to Romney, she argued, whose campaign headquarters were housed in a nondescript commercial building squatting on the North End waterfront. Things went quickly awry. The rally was supposed to take Team Mitt by surprise, but news leaked to the local media—and Chicago decided to push ahead with the outdoor event, even though relocating it to an indoor venue would allow them to screen the crowd for disruptive Romney commandos. […]

“Obama, who wasn’t consulted about the event beforehand, couldn’t believe what he was looking at when he saw the video of Axe shouting to be heard in Boston, according to several Democrats close to the campaign. ‘What was that?’ he asked, according to two people close to the situation. Later, he described what he had seen as ‘a spectacle.’ ‘We’re not going to do that kind of thing again, are we?’ he added.”