Obama's appearance on Leno last night was big news. Huge, in fact. It's no understatement to say that all of us are anxiously watching the markets today to see how they'll react to the President of the United States making an off-color joke about how poor his bowling is. Sigh. That said, Obama did make some actual news, though it's not gotten much attention. Having railed against AIG every night for the past week, Leno finally turned to the President and voiced his outrage. "It was frightening to me as an American that Congress, whoever, could decide, I don't like that group, let's pass a law and tax them at 90 percent." Given that you could have called this the Congress Responds To The Populist Fury Whipped Up By Jay Leno Act of 2009, it was a bit of an odd complaint. But it did elicit a telling response:
Well, look, I understand Congress' frustrations, and they're responding to, I think, everybody's anger. But I think that the best way to handle this is to make sure that you've closed the door before the horse gets out of the barn. And what happened here was the money has already gone out and people are scrambling to try to find ways to get back at them.The change I'd like to see in terms of tax policy is that we have a system, going back to where we were back in the 1990s, where you and I who are doing pretty well pay a little bit more to pay for health care, to pay for energy, to make sure that kids can go to college who aren't as fortunate as our -- as my kids might be. Those are the kinds of measured steps that we can take. But the important thing over the next several months is making sure that we don't lurch from thing to thing, but we try to make steady progress, build a foundation for long-term economic growth. That's what I think the American people expect.
The "I understand X's frustrations" formulation is, at this point, one of the first sentence in the Obama-to-English phrasebook. It means he doesn't support the legislation.Full transcript of Obama on Leno after the jump. It was a good interview. Even Leno thought so. At the end, he turned to Obama. "Mr. President, I must say, this has been one of the best nights of my life," he said.
