Obama's Press Show

Obama’s press conference started out normally yesterday with the customary glitz and glimmer, soaring rhetoric, hour long ‘my-ideas-are-the-BEST!’ introduction and an unsurprising first question from an AP reporter.

Then the fun happened. Surprising many of the White House Press Corps, Obama took an obviously staged question from the Huffington Post, a rabidly liberal, Obama-loving blog.

“Since we're on Iran, I know Nico Pitney is here from Huffington Post,” said Obama. “Nico, I know that you, and all across the Internet, we've been seeing a lot of reports coming directly out of Iran. I know that there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet. Do you have a question?”

Not often does a President know the content of the question before it was asked, so you could come to the conclusion that Obama knew exactly what was going to be said – and he took the opportunity to prepare a rousing answer highlighting his new stance on Iran after being called timid and meek by many Republicans (answering “What do you think?” after being asked if that was the reason).

Obama even became annoyed when asked by McClatchy's Margaret Talev about his smoking habits, in reference to his “do as I say, not as I do” tobacco law.

“"I think it's fair, Margaret, to just say that you just think it's neat to ask me about my smoking, as opposed to it being relevant to my new law," said Obama.

He must have been off his game without his trusty teleprompter.

That could also explain why he dodged questions from Urban Radio Network's April Ryan and press corps senior member Helen Thomas, answering "Hold on one second, let me answer the question” and "Hold on a second, Helen. That's - that's a different question" before completing avoiding them all together and moving on.

All in all, the press conference must have been a success for him after effectively avoiding those pesky hard hitting questions and answering all the softball questions highlighting his liberal agenda. Maybe next he should stick with the teleprompter and staged questions, it might go even better.

Comments

[Dan]

Remember Guckert/Gannon?

Even if you weren't horribly mistaken in your conclusions about the question by Pitney, I think Republicans should avoid comments about who's asking press conference questions for at least a decade.