Wednesday, December 03, 2008

No more love (so soon)?

I link you to CNN's Campbell Brown most recent "Cutting through the Bull" segment taking Obama to task about questions from the press. Cracks in Obamedia?

In part:
Reporter: You talked about the importance just now of having different voices and robust debate within your administration, but again going back to the campaign, you were asked and talked about the qualifications of the -- now your nominee for secretary of state and you belittled her travels around the world, equated it to having teas with foreign leaders. And your new White House counsel said her resume was grossly exaggerated when it came to foreign policy. I'm wondering if you can talk about the evolution of your views of her credentials since the spring?

Obama: I think this is fun for the press to try to stir up whatever quotes were generated during the course of the campaign. No, I understand, and you're having fun.

There we go again. The pesky media, all we want to do is have a little fun, stir things up for our own amusement.

Really, how silly of that reporter to dare ask you, Mr. President-elect, how it is that you completely mocked Hillary Clinton's foreign policy experience just a few months ago and yet now you think there is no one more qualified than she to lead your foreign policy team?

It's a clever device, treating a question so dismissively in an attempt to delegitimize it, as annoying as you may have found it. It is a fair question.

...

You could have explained the evolution of your thinking, instead of belittling a question you didn't like.

Mr. President-elect, reporters we hope are going to ask you a lot of annoying questions over the next four years. Get used to it.

That is the job of the media, to hold you accountable, but this isn't about the media, it's about the American people, many of whom voted for you because of what you said during the campaign, and they have a right to know which of those things you meant and which you didn't.

Apparently, as you made clear Monday, you didn't mean what you said about Hillary Clinton. So what else didn't you mean?

The media is going to be asking, and you were wrong Monday. Annoying questions are about more than just the press having fun. Annoying questions are about the press doing its job, and the people's right to know.

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