By MAUREEN DOWD

White House Press Secretary Gibbs under fire

WASHINGTON DC (Hollywood Today) 8/15/10 — Robert Gibbs should be yanked as White House press secretary.  Not because of his outburst against the “professional left.” He was right about that.

In an interview with The Hill last week, Gibbs once more proved Michael Kinsley’s maxim that a gaffe is just truth slipping out.  He said the president’s lefty critics “ought to be drug-tested,” would only “be satisfied when we have Canadian health care and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon,” and “wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”

His colleagues tried to excuse Gibbs by saying he was suffering from a bug going around the White House. But the press secretary and the president are understandably frustrated over the asymmetry at the heart of American politics: Rand Paul and Sharron Angle aside, Republicans often find a way to exploit their extremes for political advantage, while Democratic extremes typically do damage to a Democratic president. (LBN)

Ms. Dowd is a Washington DC-based New York Times columnist and best-selling author