Linda Douglass to Join Obama Campaign as Strategist/Spokesperson

Linda Douglass--long-time CBS reporter, then ABC correspondent for Capitol Hill and, since last year, a contributing editor for National Journal -- has joined the Obama campaign.

Her colleague, Marc Ambinder, reported this on his blog yesterday:

Linda Douglass, an award-winning television and print journalist who currently serves as a contributing editor to National Journal, will join Barack Obama's presidential campaign as a senior strategist and as a senior campaign spokesperson on the roadshow, a newly created position.

Douglass confirmed her new position when I walked up to the ninth floor, knocked on her door, and asked her about it. She informed National Journal President Suzanne Clark this morning of her impending departure.

"I see this as a moment of transformational change in the country and I have spent my lifetime sitting on the sidelines watching people attempt to make change. I just decided that I can't sit on the sidelines anymore."

Ah, the revolving door of politics and journalism. . .this should not come a surprise. Douglass has always been a difficult journalist to work with and for a good reason, her liberalism bleeds through in her reporting. For example, Newsbusters posted some quotes pulled by Media Research Center staff. In one of them she lamented Pennsylvania's protective laws on abortion and the fact there aren't abortionists in every county in America:

"In Pennsylvania, some patients must drive hundreds of miles to this clinic run by Jennifer Boulanger....Pennsylvania requires a woman seeking an abortion to wait for 24 hours. She must listen to a state-mandated speech and will be offered pictures of a developing fetus. The doctor, who does not want his face shown for fear of protesters, says it is not easy....More states are restricting abortion....The laws have driven some doctors out of the abortion business. Today 87 percent of U.S. counties have no abortion provider."

-- ABC's Linda Douglass on World News Tonight January 22, 2003, the 30th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision.