Few silver linings for Playbook's new boy Jack

Washington DC is a city that knows its priorities. The federal government is in disarray, the president is ripping up the post-world war two security compact and the US might be in the biggest peacetime constitutional crisis in its history.

But among the political class, it’s POLITICO’s Playbook that’s gathering attention for all the wrong reasons. Playbook is the morning email almost everyone in DC reads – it has a Westminster equivalent that fills a very similar niche – while complaining that it’s not as good as it once was.

Playbook was recently taken over by a new author, Jack Blanchard – a well-liked and highly regarded journalist in the Westminster lobby, but a virtual unknown in Washington DC.

Few have accused DC of being welcoming to newcomers, but POLITICO’s decision to drop a near-total outsider into the ultimate insiders’ email is prompting an early backlash.

Blanchard has just had to write a mea culpa for suggesting that Trump’s first month had seen more activity than any previous president – prompting a flurry of reminders from readers that Franklin Delano Roosevelt got a lot more done.

But Blanchard’s decision to add in several paragraphs from FDR’s Wikipedia page made a bad situation even worse.

“Hiring someone with at best a passing knowledge of American politics to write one of America’s premier political newsletters was an odd choice to say the least,” said former Obama senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer.

“I am a believer in the economic benefits of immigration but I think maybe Playbook should be written by an American,” said centrist commentator Matthew Yglesias, while Julia Ioffe from the Puck News site posted: “Will agree that the latest iteration of Playbook has been, erm, subpar.”

Blanchard can surely recover from this baptism of fire, but some within DC’s press corps observe that he may have enemies inside the house, as well as beyond it.

A few days before the FDR gaffe, one noted, he referred to the Super Bowl “pitch” – instead of “field” – and his editors allowed the glaring Britishism through untouched. Good to see DC has got its priorities straight.