The 90-percent dilemma

You know things are going bad for the White House when it finds itself in a cat fight with one of its biggest supporters in the media, The New York Times. Here’s the skinny: The Times publishes an article saying White House political advisers are weighing an “attack ad” campaign that would link Republicans and the Tea Party. An unidentified White House official told Politico the story in The Times was “100 percent inaccurate,” prompting the newspaper’s Washington Bureau chief to counter that the “piece is accurate.” Maybe they’re both right — or both wrong? After the exchange of salvos, The Times softened its headline and the first sentence of its story, dropping the negative notion of an “attack ad” campaign and replacing it with more generic, non-judgmental characterizations of the strategy that’s being hatched in the West Wing. No further comment from the White House — probably because it would find itself fighting a losing battle even if an unidentified official declared the new Times story “90 percent inaccurate.”