Sanders brings sardonic wit, southern drawl to White House podium
WASHINGTON, July 22 (AFP) - Sarah Huckabee Sanders -- a pugnacious Arkansas native from a political family -- took to the podium as the new White House press secretary Friday, stepping into perhaps the most difficult job in the world: speaking for Donald Trump.
Sanders brings to the crucible of the James Brady Briefing Room a southern drawl and sardonic wit. At just 34-years-old she is already a wily political veteran. She got a front row seat to a major political campaign in her early teens, when her father Mike Huckabee ran a campaign to be governor of their home state. Most notably she shares her father's ability to stripback topics to the bare bones and bring them to life with a pithy down-at-home turn of phrase. “If the president walked across the Potomac, the media would be reporting that he could not swim,” she recently remarked.
She's equally likely to disarm questioners by challenging their premise, by lobbing a stinging barb. The task in front of her now is enormous. Replacing Sean Spicer -- perhaps the most scrutinized and discredited press secre- tary in modern memory. She has to speak for this most unpredictable, unorthodox, undisciplined and mercurial of presidents. She does not step into the role cold. For months she has been the de facto press secretary as the lampooned Spicer receded out of the limelight. She has marshaled press conferences for the last month. Her most difficult task may be surviving as a principal actor in Trump's viper-pit White House and finding a decent division of labor with new communications director Anthony Scaramucci.
Traditionally communications directors have played a off-camera role, plotting policy rollouts, crafting the message, and making sure the departments are singing from the same hymn sheet. But her first visit to the podium as press secre- tary saw Scaramucci take center stage, boasting about his close ties to the president, fielding questions and winning plaudits for performance.
Scaramucci's taste for the limelight could easily lead to a situation where there are effectively two press secretaries.
For now Sanders is enjoying a honeymoon period, receiving congratulations from across the political aisle. “Congratulations to Sarah Huckabee. We may disagree on policy, but always great to see a hard working woman rise to be public WH face,” said Barack Obama's former commutations director Jen Psaki.
But as Sean Spicer learned to his cost, as press secretary, the honeymoon can be all too short lived.