the White House is looking to install a small video or computer screen into the podium used by the president for press conferences and events in the White House. "It would make it easier for the staff to pass along information without being obvious about it," says the adviser.
The screen would indicate whom to call on, seat placement for journalists, pass along notes or points to hit, and so forth, says the adviser.
Using a screen is nothing new for Obama; almost nothing he said in supposedly unscripted town hall events during the presidential campaign was unscripted, down to many of the questions and the answers to those questions. Teleprompter screens at the events scrolled not only his opening remarks, but also statistics and information he could use to answer questions.
Obama had a teleprompter set up for his remarks last week, before taking questions, but the White House couldn't use the teleprompter for anything but the remarks, because the journalists were so close to the screens. Further complicating matters, teleprompter copy can't be easily updated in real time, in a setting like a White House press conference.
I guess Promod paid his cable bill and MSNBC is coming in loud and clear again.
But, seriously, if Promod took off his partisan blinders and took the time to read the article and look at the context, the point here is that Obama is taking the use of teleprompters to an uprecedented level for either party.
Instead of just using it to read speeches, he will have his staff feed him answers to questions at press conferences and, in fact, they may even use it to tell him which reporters to call on to ask questions.
There was an unsubstantiated rumor that Bush did this during a debate in 2004 and the left (and some segments of the press) went nuts. They claimed it was proof that Bush was a dunce and a puppet.
Now, however, the current President wants to do it and the response from the left and the press is a giant shrug.
...if Promod took off his partisan blinders and took the time to read the article and look at the context, the point here is that Obama is taking the use of teleprompters to an unprecedented level for either party.
Instead of just using it to read speeches, he will have his staff feed him answers to questions at press conferences and, in fact, they may even use it to tell him which reporters to call on to ask questions.
There was an unsubstantiated rumor that Bush did this during a debate in 2004 and the left (and some segments of the press) went nuts. They claimed it was proof that Bush was a dunce and a puppet.
Now, however, the current President wants to do it and the response from the left and the press is a giant shrug.
There was an unsubstantiated rumor that Bush did this during a debate in 2004 and the left (and some segments of the press) went nuts. They claimed it was proof that Bush was a dunce and a puppet.
Wait. Didn't whomod or Ray go apeshit here on that very thing?
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
There was an unsubstantiated rumor that Bush did this during a debate in 2004 and the left (and some segments of the press) went nuts. They claimed it was proof that Bush was a dunce and a puppet.
Wait. Didn't whomod or Ray go apeshit here on that very thing?
There was an unsubstantiated rumor that Bush did this during a debate in 2004 and the left (and some segments of the press) went nuts. They claimed it was proof that Bush was a dunce and a puppet.
Wait. Didn't whomod or Ray go apeshit here on that very thing?
"Obama’s reliance on the teleprompter is unusual – not only because he is famous for his oratory, but because no other president has used one so consistently and at so many events large and small."
President Barack Obama doesn’t go anywhere without his TelePrompter.
The textbook-sized panes of glass holding the president’s prepared remarks follow him wherever he speaks.
Resting on top of a tall, narrow pole, they flank his podium during speeches in the White House’s stately parlors. They stood next to him on the floor of a manufacturing plant in Indiana as he pitched his economic stimulus plan. They traveled to the Department of Transportation this week and were in the Capitol Rotunda last month when he paid tribute to Abraham Lincoln in six-minute prepared remarks.
Obama’s reliance on the teleprompter is unusual – not only because he is famous for his oratory, but because no other president has used one so consistently and at so many events large and small.
After the teleprompter malfunctioned a few times last summer and Obama delivered some less-than-soaring speeches, reports surfaced that he was training to wean himself off of the device while on vacation in Hawaii. But no luck.
His use of the teleprompter makes work tricky for the television crews and photographers trying to capture an image of the president announcing a new Cabinet secretary or housing plan without a pane of glass blocking his face. And it is a startling sight to see such sleek, modern technology set against the mahogany doors and Bohemian crystal chandeliers in the East Room or the marble columns of Grand Foyer.
“It’s just something presidents haven’t done,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, a presidential historian who has held court in the White House since December of 1975. “It’s jarring to the eye. In a way it stands in the middle between the audience and the president because his eye is on the teleprompter.”
Just how much of a crutch the teleprompter has become for Obama was on sharp display during his latest Commerce secretary announcement. The president spoke from a teleprompter in the ornate Indian Treaty Room for a few minutes. Then Gov. Gary Locke stepped to the podium and pulled out a piece of paper for reference.
The president’s teleprompter also elicited some uncomfortable laughter after he announced Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as his choice for Health and Human Services secretary. “Kathy,” Obama said, turning the podium over to Sebelius, who waited at the microphone for an awkward few seconds while the teleprompters were lowered to the floor and the television cameras rolled.
Obama has relied on a teleprompter through even the shortest announcements and when repeating the same lines on his economic stimulus plan that he's been saying for months – whereas past presidents have mostly worked off of notes on the podium except during major speeches, such as the State of the Union.
Ari Fleischer, a former spokesman for George W. Bush, said while it’s entirely a matter of personal style, using a teleprompter at these smaller events has its drawbacks.
“It removes you from the audience in the room,” Fleischer said. When speaking from notes, Fleischer said, the president can pick up his head and make eye contact with those in the audience, as opposed to focusing on the teleprompter to his left and right.
Bush, Fleischer added, “would use the teleprompter for his major big events, but when he would travel around the country or do events he would almost always work off of large index cards.”
The White House says Obama’s point of reference is insignificant.
“Whether one uses note cards or a teleprompter, the American people are a lot more concerned about the plans relayed than the method of delivery,” said Bill Burton, deputy press secretary.
Obama has never tried to hide his use of a teleprompter. It was a mainstay during the final months of his campaign. He brought it to county fairs and campaign rallies alike - and once had it set up in the ring at a rodeo.
In a break from his routine, Obama did not use a teleprompter during his pre-inauguration speech at a factory in Bedford Heights, Ohio - and his delivery seemed to suffer. He paused too long at parts. He accentuated the wrong words. And overall he sounded hesitant and halting as he spoke from the prepared remarks on the podium.
As president, the stakes in what he says are higher. Governing is not campaigning, and, as a former first-term Senator, Obama has not held a previous elected position where his words carried even close to this level of influence.
“In this kind of environment you don’t want to make mistakes - on the economy you’re talking about doing things that affect the markets,” Kumar said.
But, be it extra precaution, style or a mental crutch, Obama has shown in the past that he needs the teleprompter. And while he still has his prepared remarks placed on the podium in a leather folder, the White House has shown no sign of trying to wean him off of it.
Before Obama entered a room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Wednesday to announce his crackdown on defense contracts, a CNN reporter asked an Obama aide if the teleprompter could be moved further away from the podium or lowered. The answer was an unequivocal ‘no.’
“He uses them to death,” a television crewmember who also covered the White House under Clinton and Bush, said of the teleprompter. “The problem is he never looks at you. He’s looking left, right, left, right – not at the camera. It’s almost like he’s not making eye contact with the American people.”
Wednesday’s event posed another scenario photographers and television crews have to work around. Obama had five others join him at the announcement, including Sen. John McCain. The takeaway shot was of Obama and McCain. But the teleprompter on Obama’s left was almost directly in front of McCain.
“You couldn’t get a good angle on him with McCain,” said a White House photographer who also covered Bush. “So if there’s someone else important in the frame, it’s hard to get a shot without the teleprompter.”
10. Just after he's been sworn in by him, the newly-minted Vice President Joe Biden gets the name of Justice John Paul Stephens, "one of the great justices" of the Supreme Court, wrong by calling him "Justice Stewart":
9. Barack Obama jokes about Nancy Reagan having séances in the White House. He later called her to apologise after the AP noted that although she had consulted astrologers, "she did not hold conversations with the dead":
8. Joe Biden forgets the "website number" for the White House internet site designed to show how TARP money is being spent:
7. Barack Obama mixes up the windows and doors at his new home:
6. Joe Biden jokes about Chief Justice John Roberts fluffing the inauguration oath. The president is visibly annoyed with his veep and Biden later apologises:
5. A Marine One double. First, on his maiden Marine One trip Obama breaches protocol and makes life uncomfortable for an enlisted marine by shaking the the serviceman's hand as he's saluting his commander-in-chief:
Then - Gerald Ford, eat your heart out. Barack Obama bangs his head as he boards his helicopter:
4. Joe Biden tells his wife that he had the choice of being either Secretary of State or vice-president - an offer that was news to Obama aides and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when Jill Biden spilled the beans on Oprah:
3. Gordon Brown presents the new President with: a pen holder carved from the timbers of HMS Gannett, a sister ship of HMS Resolute; the commissioning certificate of HMS Resolute; and a seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill. In return, the Prime minister gets 25 DVDS, which don't work in Britain:
2. Joe Biden tells a former Senate colleague who addresses him as "Mr Vice-President" to "give me a f---ing break":
1. The latest one takes the biscuit. Barack Obama jokes about the disabled on the Jay Leno show. Afterwards, he calls the head of the Special Olympics to apologise:
NB I've only included gaffes committed since the presidential election on November 4th. In October, I did this blog on the top dozen campaign gaffes, which features several from Obama and Biden.
[Irish Prime Minister Brian] Cowen was 20 seconds into his second address when it dawned on him that he was giving word for word the speech that Obama had just read from the same teleprompter.
Cowen stopped and looked back at the president to say, "That's your speech."
Obama laughed and returned to the podium to offer what might have been Cowen's remarks. In doing so, President Obama thanked President Obama for inviting everyone over.
Think about this: Cowen's gaffe made perfectly clear that the teleprompter was on the fritz. Obama nonetheless read through a speech thanking himself in the third person. Clearly, when the President is in front of the teleprompter he basically shuts off his brain and goes on automatic pilot.
I suppose this makes some sense, given that Obama is such a practiced speaker and uses the teleprompter so much. But it does make one wonder how seriously we should take his words if, like a computer regurgitating its programmers' input, he's not even aware of what he's saying.
If you thought Hillary's laugh was creepy, wait until you hear President Obama from 60Minutes last night, laughing about the economic crisis. Video here.
ON THE SUBJECT OT THE AILING AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY THE PRESIDENT SAID HE IS STILL COMMITTED TO HELPING GENERAL MOTORS AND CHRYSLER AVERT BANKRUPTCY, BUT HE SAYS THEY HAVE YET TO DEMONSTRATE THEY CAN REMAIN ECONOMICALLY VIABLE. AND THERE ARE MAJOR POLITICAL OBSTACLES.
PRESIDENT OBAMA:
I just want to say that— the only thing less popular than putting money into banks is putting money (LAUGHS) into the auto industry. So—
STEVE KROFT:
18 percent are in favor.
PRESIDENT OBAMA:
(LAUGHS) That's—
STEVE KROFT:
Seventy-six percent against.
PRESIDENT OBAMA:
It— it— it's not a high number.
STEVE KROFT:
You're sitting here. And you're— you are laughing. You are laughing about some of these problems. Are people going to look at this and say, "I mean, he's sitting there just making jokes about (LAUGHTER) money—” How do you deal with— I mean, wh— explain -
PRESIDENT OBAMA:
Well—
STEVE KROFT:
—the mood and your laughter.
PRESIDENT OBAMA:
Yeah, I mean, there's got to be—
STEVE KROFT:
Are you punch drunk?
PRESIDENT OBAMA:
No, no. There's gotta be a little gallows humor to (LAUGHS) get you through the day. You know, sometimes my team— talks about the fact that if— if you had said to us a year ago that— the least of my problems would be Iraq, which is still a pretty serious problem — I don't think anybody would have believed it. But— but we've got a lot on our plate. And — a lot of difficult decisions that we're going to have to make.
He could be one of those people who, when they feel super-stressed, laugh. I'm one of those people and it drives my wife insane. We'll be having a huge argument and all of a sudden I'll start laughing because it's the only way I can keep from completely going mad.
He could be one of those people who, when they feel super-stressed, laugh.
I thought of that too. It's hardly reassuring, however. If that is the case it would seem to indicate that either: (a) Mr. Cool was having trouble handling "60 Minutes" without the teleprompter; (b) sources that have said he's currently in over his head are correct.
Obama could actually work this to his favor. When he sits down with the Iranian and they start talking about nuking us, he could start his nervous laughters. If he does it right, maybe they'll think he's crazy, too crazy to mess with, and back off. Much like how no one would fuck with Reagan because they knew he was crazy and go ape shit on them if they tried anything.
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
WASHINGTON -- What kind of politician brings a teleprompter to a news conference?
A careful one.
President Barack Obama took no chances in his second prime-time news conference, reading a prepared statement in which he took both sides of the AIG bonus brouhaha and asked an anxious nation for its patience.
"There are no quick fixes," he said, "and there are no silver bullets."
It's an interesting dichotomy: Obama came before the nation to sell one of the most expensive and politically risky agendas ever offered by a U.S. president, but his language was heavy with caution. A hard-willed plan given a soft sell.
Served up opportunities to lead with his heart, Obama was cerebral. Cool and calming in a time of white-hot public anger.
"You know, there was a lot of outrage and finger-pointing last week, and much of it is understandable," Obama said of the bonus issue in his opening remarks. "I'm as angry as anybody about those bonuses that went to some of the very same individuals who brought our financial system to its knees."
"Bankers and executives on Wall Street need to realize that enriching themselves on the taxpayers' dime is inexcusable, that the days of outsized rewards and reckless speculation that puts us all at risk have to be over," the president told reporters and the nation.
But he didn't look angry. Nor did he sound much like a pitchfork-wielding populist.
"At the same time, the rest of us can't afford to demonize every investor or entrepreneur who seeks to make a profit. That drive is what has always fueled our prosperity, and it is what will ultimately get these banks lending and our economy moving once more," he said.
It was a carefully modulated statement, and Obama -- relying on a familiar crutch -- read it off a flat-screen monitor perched at the back of the East Room.
The teleprompter was no help during the question-and-answer session (reporters don't signal their intentions), but Obama was no less careful during that give and take.
Asked why people should trust government with the regulatory authority to take over failing financial companies such as troubled insurer American International Group Inc., Obama passed on the chance to demonize Washington.
"Keep in mind, it is precisely because of the lack of this authority that the AIG situation has gotten worse," Obama said. He then gave a scholarly explanation of how the proposal would work.
Pressed again, Obama cited the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's handling of the IndyMac Bank as an example of government properly using its authority.
The government did something right? That's news to most Americans.
Still, it's hard to criticize Obama's communication skills or tactics. Polls show that while the public has turned against Washington and Wall Street, the president's ratings remain steady.
He has aggressively delivered his cautious message -- through town halls, talk shows, travel and, yes, prime-time news conferences. His message: Stick with me and my $3.6 trillion budget.
"This is a big ocean liner, it's not a speedboat. It doesn't turn around immediately," he said Tuesday night. "But we're in a better, better place because of the decisions that we made." Calm. Cool. Careful.
One of the few times he summoned raw emotion came after a reporter demanded to know why it took him so long to express outrage over the AIG executive bonuses.
"It took a couple of days because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak."
Even better, he likes to have it up on the teleprompter.
Letterman mentioned Obama’s appearance on “60 Minutes.” He apologized profusely for His Presidency, since the stresses of the office were beyond the ability of any human to bear (”I wouldn’t give His troubles to a monkey on a rock!”) He showed a clip from the “60 Minutes” interview, with a balloon animal hat superimposed over Obama’s head to make it look like he was going crazy.
He startled me for a second, when he mentioned the teleprompter: “Critics are now criticizing his use of a TELEPROMPTER [mouths a silent WOW!] Okay, maybe he should think about stepping down!”
He introduced a new video bit called “Teleprompter vs. No Teleprompter.” First he showed a clip of the President eloquently reading a speech from the teleprompter. For contrast he showed a clip of a helpless stuttering President, clearly at a loss for words. President BUSH, that is. I was incredulous. There is no reason to mine the past administration for comedy, since that hole has been stripped dry for quite some time. Especially with such a plentiful reserve in the current administration. In five seconds, I can find at least three videos of the new President stuttering off teleprompter miserably.
Perhaps their connections to CBS news could have found the missing tape of Him thanking Himself for inviting all the wonderful people to the St. Patrick’s event, or even a clip of his Special Olympics joke. But no, the writers over at Letterman, decided the funniest contrast, would be to resurrect their old “Great Moments in Presidential Speeches” shtick. It is my opinion, at that exact moment David Letterman officially became a hack. (Perhaps HE should think about stepping down.) Or he could slide into retirement gracefully. We could find a theatre in Branson Missouri, where he could toss out gags alongside other comics who have also found it difficult to update their acts.
Former Bush adviser Karl Rove, in a FOX News interview, called Joe Biden a "liar" over the vice president's claim this week of having privately castigated former President George W. Bush.
Rove was the latest former Bush aides to challenging the veracity of Biden's story and an earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush, who said he doesn't remember the incidents.
"It didn't happen," Rove, a FOX News contributor, said in an interview scheduled to air on "On the Record" at 10 p.m. EDT. "I hate to say this, but he's a serial exaggerator. If I was being unkind, I would say liar, but it is a habit he ought to drop."
Biden spokesman Jay Carney declined to specify the dates of his boss's purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.
"The vice president stands by his remarks," Carney told FOX News without elaboration.
Those remarks include a shot that Biden took at Bush on Tuesday.
"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden told CNN on Tuesday, "'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said: 'Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'"
Numerous Bush aides dispute that, as well as a similar assertion by Biden in 2004, when the former senator from Delaware told scores of Democratic colleagues that he had challenged Bush's moral certitude about the Iraq war during a private meeting in the Oval Office. Two years later, Biden repeated his story about dressing down the president.
"When I speak to the president - and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff," Biden said on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" in April 2006. "And the president will say things to me, and I'll literally turn to the president, say: 'Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don't know the facts?' And he'll look at me and he'll say - my word - he'll look at me and he'll say: 'My instincts.' He said: 'I have good instincts.' I said: 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough.'"
Bush aides now dispute the veracity of both assertions by Biden.
"I never recall Biden saying any of that," former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said after reviewing detailed notes of Bush's White House meetings with Biden, which include numerous direct quotes from Biden. "I find it odd that he said he met with him alone all the time. I don't think that's true."
Fleischer said that whenever Bush met with Sen. Biden, the meeting also included a congressional counterpart so as to not "antagonize" the House.
Rove went even further.
"With all due respect to the vice president, these are the kind of things you can get away with if you are a United States senator or a backbencher in the U.S. House of Representatives," he said. "You should not exaggerate and lie like this when you are the vice president of the United States."
Candida P. Wolff, Bush's White House liaison to Capitol Hill, said the only meetings she remembered between Bush and Biden also included other lawmakers. She said such meetings were held in the Cabinet Room or the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, not the Oval Office, and certainly did not last for "hours."
"The president would never sit through two hours of Joe Biden," Wolff said. "I don't ever remember Biden being in the Oval. He was such a blowhard on all that stuff - there wasn't a reason to bring him in."
Andrew Card, former White House chief of staff, reviewed the two Biden claims and said: "This does not ring true to me. I doubt that it happened."
A spokesman for Bush declined comment, although a person close to the former president said Bush does not remember either episode.
This is not the first time the veracity of Biden's assertions has been challenged. In 1988, he dropped out of the presidential race after being accused of plagiarizing British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. The Washington Post also cited "the senator's boastful exaggerations of his academic record."
Last year, liberal Slate magazine recalled that "Biden's misdeeds encompassed numerous self-aggrandizing thefts, misstatements, and exaggerations that seemed to point to a serious character defect."
Also last year, Biden came under fire for telling a questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.
"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube in July. "Number one, you take all the troops out -- you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."
But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."
Biden went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.
"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."
Seven weeks after claiming to have been "shot at" in Iraq, Biden again raised eyebrows with another story about his exploits in war zones -- this time on "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where my helicopter was forced down."
"If you want to know where Al Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."
But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February 2008. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Sens. Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.
"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."
STEVE KROFT, voice-over: ON THE SUBJECT OT THE AILING AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY THE PRESIDENT SAID HE IS STILL COMMITTED TO HELPING GENERAL MOTORS AND CHRYSLER AVERT BANKRUPTCY, BUT HE SAYS THEY HAVE YET TO DEMONSTRATE THEY CAN REMAIN ECONOMICALLY VIABLE. AND THERE ARE MAJOR POLITICAL OBSTACLES.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I just want to say that-- the only thing less popular than putting money into banks is putting money (LAUGHS) into the auto industry. So--
STEVE KROFT: 18 percent are in favor.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: (LAUGHS) That's--
STEVE KROFT: Seventy-six percent against.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: It-- it's not a high number.
STEVE KROFT: You're sitting here. And you are laughing. You are laughing about some of these problems. Are people going to look at this and say, "I mean, he's sitting there just making jokes about (LAUGHTER) money--- How do you deal with-- I mean, wh-- explain
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well--
STEVE KROFT: --the mood and your laughter.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yeah, I mean, there's got to be--
STEVE KROFT: Are you punch drunk?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: No, no. There's gotta be a little gallows humor to (LAUGHS) get you through the day. You know, sometimes my team— talks about the fact that if— if you had said to us a year ago that— the least of my problems would be Iraq, which is still a pretty serious problem — I don't think anybody would have believed it. But— but we've got a lot on our plate. And — a lot of difficult decisions that we're going to have to make.
Gallows humor? We're going to die?
You know that if W. Bush made these exact same remarks, it would be front page news and lead every network broadcast for a week. With headlines like: "BUSH IS OUT OF TOUCH", or "BUSH IS INSENSITIVE TO THE PLIGHT OF WORKING AND UNEMPLOYED AMERICANS", or "BUSH CAN'T EVEN GRASP WHAT THE TRUE ISSUES ARE FACING OUR ECONOMY AND THE THREAT IT POSES, SO HE JUST GIGGLES LIKE AN IDIOT".
But because it's a media-favored liberal Democrat, it barely makes a ripple on the radar. Minimal coverage.
Several have pointed out that the stated positions of Obama are virtually identical to the stated positions of George W. Bush. But Bush is portrayed as a failure and an idiot, and Obama is portrayed as a visionary genius who will bring "change" and save us all. (Even as Obama just gives lip-service to pretty much the same positions as Bush, and leads us all to oblivion)
Relatively speaking, this Kroft/Obama interview is like O'Reilly Factor compared to the dominant gushing Obama-worshipping coverage across the rest of the media. Though even a single story on a news program as prominent as 60 Minutes will be buried under Himalayan mountains of daily media gush that will eclipse this Kroft interview under the massive daily tons of pro-Obama spin.
Last edited by Wonder Boy; 2009-04-104:58 AM. Reason: edited G-man's post to correct the script-code that messed up when quoted. What a pain !
WASHINGTON -- What kind of politician brings a teleprompter to a news conference?
