Sometimes the stage overwhelms the message
The folks over at The Trail have a fun post about Mitt Romney's dash to criticize Hillary Clinton's new healthcare plan. It seems the former Massachusetts governor summoned the media to a sidewalk outside St. Vincent's Hospital to dismiss the proposal as "bad medicine."
The press conference was held on a public street in New York City, but the hospital objected to Romney's attempt to use its facility as a stage backdrop -- and perhaps imply the medical institution was taking political sides.
"We find it unfortunate that Mr. Romney misappropriated the image and good will of St. Vincent's Hospital to further a political agenda," hospital spokesman Michael Fagan said in a statement. "While St. Vincent's believes that there needs to be real discussion about healthcare reform and finding ways to provide coverage to the now 47 million Americans without health insurance, it is inappropriate for the hospital to be used for political gain."
The punchline, The Trail points out: The hospital is home to the Rudolph W. Giuliani Trauma Center. Sounds like it might be time for a little triage for the Romney advance team.
-- Scott Martelle
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
Subscribe to this Blog
