Obama's Administration Sucks at Communications

Is it just me, or did Gibbs totally bomb yesterday with his first daily press briefing? I heard the whole thing live and cringed the entire time. It seemed as though he had done zero preparation for even the most obvious of questions. I and every other political junkie in America had predicted every one of those questions 3 hours earlier. Yet Gibbs stammered and rambled and failed to actually answer any of the questions. Low balls, high balls, whatever. He struck out no matter how simple a pitch they gave him.

Between that briefing, the continued lack of updates to the new White House blog, and the failure to provide full press access to the second swearing-in, it looks to me like the Obama Administration is really bombing in the communications department.

On actual work, I have to give them credit. Obama has been moving very quickly with meaningful executive orders. He's already stopped torture, ordered the closure of Guantanamo Bay and ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to begin work on withdrawing forces from Iraq. But a successful presidency has to master communications as well as policy and they are going to have to find their legs quickly in order to prevent Obama's political capital from slipping away before he can get anything of substance out of Congress.