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"We're part of the administration. Why shouldn't I be for a lot of the things we're talking about?" Landesman, appointed by Obama to a four-year term, said in the interview. "I feel in sync with a lot of the themes that the administration is talking about. That doesn't mean I'm going to be advocating their particular programs, but it does mean I'm absolutely sympathetic to the general message and themes that are coming from the White House." Landesman's political affinities are far clearer than those of his NEA predecessor, Dana Gioia, whose comments about the Bush administration were mostly limited to praise for first lady Laura Bush. In his prepared remarks, Landesman cited Obama as the first president since Theodore Roosevelt to write his own books, an assertion that surprised Richard Nixon editor Michael Korda, who remembered the former president working in longhand on yellow legal pads, and Robert Gottlieb, the editor of former President Clinton's "My Life." "I guess Rocco L. never noticed that we had a president named Bill Clinton, who, as it happens, wrote every word of his autobiography himself
-- and very well, too," Gottlieb said. "Believe me: I was there."
[Associated
Press;
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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