White House uses Twitter to bully critics

SAN FRANCISCO - APRIL 14: Attendees mingle during a break at the first annual Chirp, Twitter Developer's Conference April 14, 2010 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Lee uses a similar approach. He’s unafraid to bully and use White House allies to back him up. He has retweeted liberal journalists and bloggers such as Ezra Klein of The Washington Post, Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo and Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones. And when he’s not directly attacking conservatives, he will promote the work of surrogates such as the Center for American Progress and Media Matters, two front groups for the White House.

Lee’s responsibilities used to be handled almost exclusively by the Democratic National Committee (his former employer), but now it’s done on the taxpayers’ dime as well — a point acknowledged by The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein (a self-described friend of Lee).

That’s left some White House veterans wondering about its appropriateness.

“Whatever happened to this being the people’s house?” asked Tony Fratto, former deputy assistant to President George W. Bush and principal deputy press secretary. “Doing outreach to media, yes. A specific subset of ideologically aligned media, I just think it’s bizarre.”

And while this may be the next evolution in White House communications, the narrow focus is unusual, according to Kevin Sullivan, who oversaw the rapid response operation under Bush as White House communications director.

“Rapid response was not a partisan enterprise for us at all. It was fact-based,” Sullivan said. “We used the test: ‘Is this something that was wrong or misleading?’ It had nothing to do with being progressive or conservative.” (Top NLRB member should recuse himself from Boeing case, critics say)

Towson University professor Martha Joynt Kumar, a scholar of White House communications, said the Obama administration is evolving with the changing media landscape. That’s led to an embrace of Twitter for rapid response — a communications tool she believes the Bush White House would’ve used as well.

Obama, in fact, participates in the first-ever Twitter townhall today at the White House.

Those who communicate regularly with Lee dismissed the complaints about his work. Ari Melber, a correspondent for The Nation magazine, said the White House is adapting and Lee’s role as director of progressive media and online response is part of it.

“Positions like these reflect a wider, flatter media that government wants to reach,” Melber said. “What’s interesting about Jesse is that he is there to engage the progressive blogosphere by setting up conference calls and doing outreach, but on Twitter and other platforms, he ends up talking to bloggers and activists who are strongly conservative.”

Eder is certainly the most prominent, but not alone. Brittany Cohan, a self-described “social media geek” at the Republican National Committee, has also caught Lee’s attention. Like Eder, she has more than 81,000 tweets — and no hesitation to challenge the White House.

Lee, meanwhile, has shown little restraint, unafraid to pick fights and attack critics, even if it stretches the bounds of proper decorum and etiquette usually practiced by the White House.

Recent tweets have covered his taste in music (Foo Fighters) and food (Washington’s fish market). His very first tweet he declared: “OK, turning on the White House Twitter machine that they issued me in 3…2…1…” with a photo of a Terminator mask.

“If you’re going to get into these kinds of debates every day, you run the risk of tripping yourself up,” said Fratto, the former Bush aide. “And when you do trip, no one is going to say that was just Jesse Lee. No, it was the White House. So it’s a risk. And as an overall effort, it tends to make the White House look petty.”

Rob Bluey directs the Center for Media and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation. Sterling Beard, a member of Heritage’s Young Leaders Program, contributed to this report.