For months, the New York Times has been complaining that they've been stiffed by Barack Obama. Tradition has it that the president sits with them for a pre-inauguration interview. Obama didn't. And nor did he give them a quick post-inauguration interview. But he gave them 35 minutes this week. Finally. At long last. The Paper of Record gets a crack at the young president. They asked: "The first six weeks have given people a glimpse of your spending priorities. Are you a socialist as some people have suggested?" Obama said no. But these are serious journalists. So they followed up. "Is there anything wrong with saying yes?" And then: "So to people who suggested that you are more liberal than you suggested on the campaign, you say, what?" And then: "Is there one word name for your philosophy? If you're not a socialist, are you a liberal? Are you progressive? One word?" The economy is collapsing. The Omnibus bill is flailing in the Senate. The Treasury Department still needs a workable approach to the banks. Why is the New York Times wasting Obama's day -- and their 35 minutes of interview time -- with these gotchas? Did they really think he would slip and admit that his stimulus plan was cadged from a footnote in Das Kapital? Sigh. In any case, I liked this response from Obama:
Q: Have you gotten a new appreciation at all, or maybe a little sympathy for what your predecessors went through in terms of a president can't control all the events?A: Oh, absolutely. Look, I actually appreciated that before I took office. I always felt that a president is accountable for making the best decisions, but that there are going to be a lot of unexpected twists and turns along the way. And as I said recently, this is still a human enterprise and these are big, tough, complicated problems. Somebody noted to me that by the time something reaches my desk, that means it's really hard. Because if it were easy, somebody else would have made the decision and somebody else would have solved it. So typically, if something’s in my folder, it means that you’ve got some very big, difficult, sticky, contradictory issues to be wrestled with.
