This interview with Barack Obama is noteworthy for a few reasons. First, it is one of the few times you see an interviewer ask questions of Obama in the same tone and formulation that John McCain gets day in and day out. Obama doesn’t like it, clearly, and chastises the questioner for acting as John McCain’s “proxy.” (Spend an hour with McCain, Senator, and you’ll see hundreds of reporters vying to provide that service to you.) Obama is not known for a thick skin, as you will recall from the Philadelphia debate. (Which, come to think of it, was the last time he was challenged so rigorously.) So we add to the Thou Shalt Not’s: don’t ask normal, tough press questions when addressing The One.

Second, notice his formulation that “the American people aren’t interested” in the tit-for-tat. To what was he referring? His own vote in favor of the Bush-Cheney bill. It really is a glaring problem in his whole New Politics formulation and his answer is weak (I tried to strip out the bad stuff) since he ultimately voted yes and has criticized McCain for doing the bidding of Bush/Cheney and the oil companies. It is easy to understand why he hopes the American people are uninterested. So add to the Thou Shalt Not’s: don’t question Obama’s own previous actions. Only his words (the latest version and not last week’s) can be discussed.

The real question for those debates in the fall is whether any of the moderators have the nerve to treat Obama the way he was in Philadelphia and the way he was in this interview: with the same skepticism, vigor and aggressiveness any candidate would receive. I’m betting “no.” But I am willing to be pleasantly surprised.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 9:24 AM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.