In Defense of Protective Poolers

Much fun has been made at the expense of the “pool reports” being sent out by the Obama-Biden transition team on behalf of the journalists covering President-elect Barack Obama.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow riffed at length last night about the absurdity of the minute details present in the reports, which note when he goes to the gym, what his aides say he does, etc. TPM’s Greg Sargent also notes the ridiculous nature of some of the dispatches.

However, it may be worthwhile to put the pool reports in context.

Obama is currently being covered by what’s called a “protective pool” — just as he and Sen. John McCain were covered during the final months of the presidential campaign.

The protective pool consists of a very small group of reporters and photographers whose job is to shadow Obama’s every move, as much as possible, when he leaves his home.

The purpose, as it was very frankly explained to me by a Reuters reporter when I was covering McCain on the campaign trail, is to make sure the candidate (or in this case, president-elect) doesn’t die — and if he does, or if some other newsworthy event occurs, to make sure the media is immediately aware of the situation.

The pool acts as the eyes and ears of the larger press corps, and per the informal pool rules, the poolers cannot publish any detail, no matter how insignificant, that is not shared in the pool report. Therefore, poolers often go to excessive lengths to report EVERYTHING: what the subject is wearing, the surroundings, what kind of food is consumed, etc.

Also, as a function of the boredom that accompanies the usually unglamorous work of sitting in a van, sometimes for hours, waiting for the subject to leave a building, pool reporters will entertain themselves by providing as irreverently detailed an account as possible.

The result is obviously not intended for publication.

Nevertheless, here it is, in all its hilarious glory.

From one of today’s pool reports:

President-elect Barack Obama’s motorcade left his Kenwood home at 7:51 a.m. and headed directly to drop off his daughters, Sasha and Malia, at their school — the University of Chicago Lab school. The motorcade arrived at the school at 8 a.m. The girls exited an SUV but their father did not. Sasha wore a colorful green backpack while Malia was dressed in darker clothes. Obama’s motorcade then headed to his normal morning workout at the Regents Park apartments, arriving at 8:08 a.m. The pool could only catch a glimpse of Obama from the back as he entered the building. He wore a dark jogging suit and dark baseball cap.

Inane? Of course.

But rather than mocking the protective pool reporters, we should be grateful — for they are on the front lines, doing the often thankless work that allows the rest of us to do our jobs with ease. And, heaven forbid, if something terrible were to happen to the president-elect, they would very likely be the ones who share the news.