White House: Obama speech won’t interfere with NFL kickoff

What’s a better warm-up act: Kid Rock or Barack Obama?

The White House, already smarting from a scheduling skirmish with House Speaker John Boehner, is now working to appease an even mightier force: the National Football League.

By postponing his jobs speech from next Wednesday to Thursday, Obama may have placated Republicans incensed at the idea of him overshadowing a presidential debate. But he’s created a new set of challenges in trying to allow for maximum exposure for the key speech but avoid overstepping the awaited start of the new football season.

“Everyone in America should be rest assured is that we will be done before kickoff in the Packers-Saints game on Thursday night,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said Thursday morning.

In March the president had to deliver a speech on international efforts in Libya just shy of prime time, in part because networks like ABC were eager not to pre-empt ratings juggernaut “Dancing with the Stars.”

Now, Pfeiffer said the White House is working with the National Football League and NBC, which is broadcasting the opening game, to discuss the same considerations.

Still, NBC may have to bump its pregame spectacular from Green Bay, Wis. (a swing state), featuring not just Kid Rock but also Lady Antebellum and Maroon 5, to another channel if it is to carry the president’s speech in full.

Even though it eventually acceded to Boehner’s request to move the speech one day, the administration is maintaining that the GOP leader had initially raised no objections to a Wednesday speech.

On MSNBC Thursday morning, Pfeiffer said they “had no reason to believe” after a conversation between Boehner and White House chief of staff Bill Daley that “there was any reason that Wednesday could not work.”

A Lucy/Charlie Brown and the football moment?

“The whole thing is silly,” Pfeiffer said. “We’ll look at everything we did to figure out how we can do things better. But, right now, we’re focused on the speech next week and the president’s plan to grow the economy and create jobs.”