The Obama administration made a major change to the Affordable Care Act last week. Businesses had faced a choice in the coming year between covering employees under new requirements or paying a fine. Now, they have an extra year to decide what they want to do and the administration promises to simplify the process.
If you are in favor of Obamacare to start with, this is a wise decision to help make sure that things are done right. If you are opposed to it, this is an act of desperation proving that the whole idea should be abandoned.
If you are a student of politics, it's something else.
Instead of a presidential news release or an appearance on the Sunday talk shows by the secretary of Health and Human Services, the news came out in a blog posting on the Treasury Department website assuring the nation's businesses that "We have listened to your feedback. And we are taking action."
That assurance came out on Tuesday, July 2, when most of Washington and the rest of the country was focused more on the coming holiday weekend than public policy.
The person issuing the advisory was Mark J. Mazur. I'll save you the trouble of looking him up. He's the assistant secretary for tax policy at the Department of the Treasury and this may be the only time he gets his name in the news.
The old standard for news you wanted to bury was a Friday afternoon news release, taking advantage of the fact that Saturday newspapers had the lowest readership for the week and many of the Sunday features and pages were already wrapped up. Even if a reporter was willing to work late Friday to follow the news, it could be tough to find anybody for comment.
A blog post on the cusp of a national holiday is the modern variation on that technique and it works just as well. Reactions good and bad were swallowed up by the July 4 festivities so by the time Monday came around, the news and the responses seemed stale.
If the administration had wanted to go the other way, wanted to make sure that this was something people would be talking about it would have followed the technique perfected by the senior senator from New York.
On any given Monday, odds are that there will be a story featuring Chuck Schumer promoting a new this or opposing an old that. He learned long ago that the Sunday afternoon news release and conference is the sure way to get his ideas in front of the people as they start their week.
Reporters love it because those who are stuck on the Sunday shift would much rather deal with whatever it is the senator is pushing than spend their time covering the parades and other community events that pass for news over the weekend.
Schumer learned long ago that it's not what you say, but when you say it.