Comments on: Live Blogging Obama’s Second Press Conference

By: Jack Goodman

Jack Goodman — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:47:09 +0000

Chuck Todd, this morning, says Obama was uncomfortable with the teleprompter in the back of the room. The old teleprompters let you look left and right as if you are talking to the audience, not starring over their heads. He adds that he asked about sacrafice because Bush didn’t after 9/11. (And Kennedy did ask too in his inaugural.)

Shocked, shocked that so little on foreighn policy. What a difference 1 year makes.

I think he ended much stronger than he ended…this is going to require long term persistance and not a quick solution. In spite of the awful questions by the press, I think Obama got his message across.

Biggest disappointment: no discussion of how he is going to submit the new budget to Congress…to duck the filabuster in the Senate. After the conference, Axelrod said he was not prepared to discuss that at this time. Would have been good journalism to see the press corps home in on this one. And a good civics lesson as well.

By: tvdunlop

tvdunlop — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 04:03:50 +0000

I was generally not terribly impressed with the quality of the questions during the entire thing, many of them seemed too similar – although the slap-downs were pretty entertaining. In general though Obama seems to want to bring in the public during these hard choices, but naturally with such great questions some important stuff is going to get skipped over, keeping it general seemed to work. How much detail can he really get into in conferences like these without seeming overly technical? Would going into significant depth(to the extent that it is actually possibly) be helpful for him? He continuously pushed themes which seems to lend into the idea that such conferences are as much a chance to go public and sell policies as they are to be transparent and inclusive.
Also, without pulling out my notes from psci206, the budget process begins with the president putting together a budget and Congress tearing it up yes? So how far will Obama’s “openness to working with Congress” go in this respect?
Oh, and the second he made that ocean liner reference I literally cringed..

By: Matthew Dickinson

Matthew Dickinson — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 02:15:31 +0000

Andrew – You are right that Obama see a political advantage in reminding viewers of his belief that we got in this mess in the first place because of Republican policies – it’s a smart strategy for two reasons: first, it buys time for his economic policies to kick in by reminding voters that it took a long time to get into this mess, and it delays the inevitable change in perception within the public regarding who is responsible for the current state of economic affairs. Right now, this is not Obama’s recession, but he knows it will be his eventually. As for the timing of the press conference, keep in mind that he has to request network time, so the decision to hold a press conference isn’t a last minute decision based on overnight polls. Nonetheless, you are right that they are very strategic (as all presidents are) in trying to time a press conference to coincide with what they hope is good news that can be tied to the president’s policies.

By: Andrew Piccirillo

Andrew Piccirillo — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:27:55 +0000

Just two quick thoughts crossed my mind watching this.. 1) Is it me or does it seem like Obama is still campaigning? His first reference in response to the procurement question was McCain, something he did frequently on the campaign trail as well. He seemed fixated on the past in a few other questions as well. Obviously he needs to keep up public support for his policies but I wasn’t so aware of this listening to Bush. 2) Is it possible the press conference and Geithner’s toxic asset plan were timed together so that Obama would have something positive to talk about? If he held a press conference two weeks ago the atmosphere would have been very different (The Dow is up over 15%).

By: Fred Greenman

Fred Greenman — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:04:13 +0000

No, I don’t think he lies. I do think the phrase indicates that he is changing preseptions from the past!