Politico's Mike Allen Gets Imus in the Mood for News

Mike Allen, the chief political correspondent for Politico, summarized for the I-Man today the role of the organization for which he works, and how his notorious Playbook came into being.  

“Politico drives conversation about the White House, Capitol Hill, lobbying, what insiders are reading and talking about in DC,” said Allen.

Playbook, his daily contribution to the site, is mainly “a quick look ahead to what people are going to be talking about,” he told Imus, adding, “People like you and me wake up and we want to know about the same ten stories, like what’s happening in the media, what’s happening on The Hill. To find those, you have to click around to 1,000 stories. Playbook does that for you.”

Originally designed for only his bosses John Harris and Jim VandeHei to read, Allen, a former Washington Post reporter, kept the tone of Playbook consistent once it went viral. “It’s a way to eavesdrop on what insiders are thinking and buzzing about,” he said.

Playbook is widely considered the go-to item for Washingtonians from the White House and Congress on down, and its popularity led to an 11-page profile of Allen in last weekend’s New York Times Magazine, where writer Mark Liebovich took some dramatic license to make Allen seem more mysterious than he actually is.

“It says people don’t know where I live; I live at 1800 Wilson Boulevard in Arlington,” he said. “It says people don’t know my birthday; it’s June 21.”

Liebovich’s point, as Allen saw it, was to show that Allen much prefers people focus on his work than on his personal life. “I’m not trying to be a celebrity journalist,” Allen said.

In today’s Playbook, Allen highlighted a marker set by President Obama and his administration yesterday: “from day one,” as Obama and his cabinet secretaries said a combined 19 times yesterday, they were prepared for the worst case scenario with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

“So now, people are going to look at, what was the White House doing on day one?” said Allen. “What was the Interior doing on day one? What was Homeland Security? What was the Pentagon doing on day one? That’s going to be a big story.”

As for comparisons to the Bush administration’s delayed response to Hurricane Katrina, Allen believes Obama’s reaction was “scaled with the problem,” increasing in intensity as the situation worsened.

He predicted that the merger of United and Continental would be in today’s headlines, as well as reports that Sen. John Ensign of Nevada could face public ethics hearings about charges he paid a large severance to a woman with whom he was having an affair.

“Please, stop it,” Imus said, breathlessly. “You’re making me hot.”

A guest at Saturday night’s White House Correspondents Dinner, Allen relayed one of the funnier bits done by Obama, where he mocked up fake Politico pages from, for example, April of 1865, where under a picture of Abraham Lincoln the headline read,  “Lincoln Saves Union, but Can He Save House Majority?”

Another, from July 3, 1776, featuring a Helen Thomas byline, read,  “Talks Break Off; Independence Dead.”

At least one person at the dinner was amusing.

-Julie Kanfer