President Obama gave his live prime-time press conference last night, with the East Room of the White House packed with journalists from around the globe (or, at least one from a Spanish-speaking country, as a reporter from Univision got to ask one of the first questions).
The President began the carefully crafted media event with a prepared opening statement. Reading from his trusty teleprompter, Obama outlined different phases to his recovery plan and emphasized that all Americans must be patient through this crisis; while we will pull out of this mess, the process will take time. The message was clear and the rhetoric, while slightly redundant, was impassioned. However, in my opinion his delivery fell flat, and from the get-go the President looked tired, a little withdrawn, perhaps a little bored. It was blatantly obvious he was reading words off a screen and made no attempt to make eye contact with the camera or the press corps, and thus made no contact with the American people. A man known for his charismatic and engaging speaking style, Obama let the details of his plan tumble from his lips and crash into the air without any emphasis behind him. It looked like he was reciting a speech he had read twenty times in the past hour, which was probably the case. After about eight minutes or so, the President opened the floor for questions.
The first question was a great one, from Jennifer Loven of the AP, as it addressed one of the more controversial issues from the past twenty-four hours: Secretary Geithner and Fed Chairman asking for sweeping authority to take over massive financial institutions in the future. The question put Obama on alert that this press conference wasn’t going to be the softball toss he enjoyed on 60 Minutes last Sunday, or the waste-of-time joke that he took part in on the Tonight Show a few days before that. He answered with interesting logic that if AIG was controlled like an FDIC-regulated bank in the first place, then this whole mess would have never happened. While that may or may not be true, it doesn’t address the theory that maybe companies should be able to fail in order to “self-medicate” themselves.
Chip Reid of CBS News was the next reporter to throw a fastball up and in at the President. Reid pressed the issue that the budget being introduced will raise the national debt an approximate $7-10 trillion over the next ten years, while Obama kept saying that his main goal was to not pass problems down to future generations. The President repsonded rather testily by immediately blaming the Bush administration:
First of all, I suspect that some of those Republican critics have a short memory, because, as I recall, I’m inheriting a $1.3 trillion deficit, annual deficit, from them. That would be point number one.
Point number two, as it turned out, was that although the debt would jump exponentially in the next ten years, the deficit would be cut in half in five years. Also, the President cited conflicting arguments when it comes to growth rate during that period, implying that it’s impossible to guess how a massive debt will impact us in ten years. I don’t exactly know either, but my guess is, “Not well.”
A few questions later, CNN’s Ed Henry delivered a quick jab that raised Obama’s ire and changed the whole tenor of the press conference. Expounding on questions from Reid and ABC’s Jake Tapper, Henry asked the President if he was worried about his daughters’ future because of all the debt that will be introduced as a direct result of his budget and spending. Henry then quickly followed that up with the simple question as to why Obama waited so long to express his anger over the AIG bonuses at a press conference, when it was obvious he knew about them for a few days, if not a week or longer, prior.
The President’s answer, while drawing a few laughs, was short, terse, and impatient: “It took us a couple of days because I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak.” Next question.
The rest of the questions touched on stem cell research, homelessness, and even race, and Obama utilized his last answer to underscore the need for Americans to be patient, while addressing some of his more vocal critics:
We haven’t immediately eliminated the influence of lobbyists in Washington. We have not immediately eliminated wasteful pork projects. And we’re not immediately going to get Middle East peace. We’ve been in office now a little over 60 days [...] I think that — you look back four years from now, I think, hopefully, people will judge that body of work and say, “This is a big ocean liner. It’s not a speedboat. It doesn’t turn around immediately. But we’re in a better place because of the decisions that we made.” All right? Thank you, everybody.
And with that, after just about an hour, the press conference ended — a forceful finish, clearly targeting people who have mocked the President for all of the “change” he has brought to the White House in the past two months. My only question is, was it really necessary? Not just the last line to hammer his critics, but was this whole media circus really necessary?
In the past week President Obama did a ridiculous interview with Jay Leno, a fluff interview with 60 Minutes, this press conference last night, and is now endeavoring to meet with liberal bloggers to give them uncut and and uncensored sound bites. If he was on this media tour to announce radical new plans or put the country at ease with new priorities, then more power to him. However, all I have seen throughout this week is the same rhetoric, the same cliches, and the same empty promises that got him elected in the first place. Now, he is forced to urge people to be patient because the sweeping changes he promised in November are nowhere in sight.
I give the President a ton of credit for reaching out to the American people and trying to connect with us, but when he reads redundant phrases off of a teleprompter, and cracks inappropriate jokes with Jay Leno, none of my concerns are being alleviated.
Our country is faced with serious issues right now. One of those main issues, the war in Iraq, wasn’t even mentioned last night. Recently Obama pledged to remove troops from Iraq, but then immediately committed massive deployments to Afghanistan. Again, there has been relatively no mention as far as how that will impact our foreign policy in the future. The only question last night regarding foreign relations came within the context of escalating tensions between Israel and Palestine. The President responded with an answer so vague that he might as well just have shrugged his shoulders, saying there is no way to predict how new leadership in both those countries will impact further negotiations. Well, obviously.
I won’t go so far as to say that Obama wasn’t ready to be President, but right now he looks woefully unprepared. The economic collapse happened before he was even elected; no one can say it just sprung up on him out of nowhere. He had two solid months between election and inauguration to pick a Treasury Secretary to lead us out of this mess, and the best he came up with was tax-dodging Tim Geithner, a man who many people want to see resigned or removed from the Treasury Department.
And now, President Obama has introduced a budget that will increase our debt to a staggering $7 trillion in ten years — and that’s a conservative estimate. His worthy goals of increasing spending for health, education, and environmental regulations are good for the short-term but just might cripple us down the road. Congress must do its job and keep the President in check to keep us out of trouble, but as long as Pelosi and Reid are in power that will never happen. We keep hearing that we must be patient, we must look towards the future and acknowledge the long-term, but I don’t know if the President is even doing that himself.
