President Obama held his second official press conference tonight. It was clearly part of his recent outreach efforts to build support for his budget. The nationally-televised prime time event followed a well-publicized trip to California in which he shared a stage with Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He was next interviewed on "60 Minutes." With new CBS and Gallup surveys showing Obama's approval/disapproval ratings increasing to 64-20 and 65-26, the president is clearly lasering in on his message. The message consistently is, "We can't wait," "My critics have no plan," "Things will get better," but "It is going to take time."
Nine of the thirteen questions Obama fielded in the one-hour question and answer session had to do with the economy or the budget. It was quite remarkable there were no questions about Iraq or Afghanistan. The only reference about Iran was when the president brought it up. In that sense, the press was focused where Obama wanted the spotlight fixed: on the budget and economic matters. You can see the conference here or read a transcript of it here.
The most provocative question came from where you would expect, Major Garrett of Fox News. Garrett's question, however, was more a rant attempting to link "Communist," "socialist," and "left-center," together in the same sentence with Obama's name and was virtually unintelligible. Chip Reid of CBS asked what was probably the sharpest question. Reid raised alarms about the large projected deficit, which ranged from Obama's estimate of $7 trillion over the next decade to the Congressional Budget Office's $9.3 trillion. He mentioned Obama's oft-repeated admonition against passing current problems along and asked whether this was not a case of his doing that himself. He quoted Republicans as saying this might be the most irresponsible budget ever.
Obama's response laid his entire approach out for inspection. First to discredit the critics he said it seems some Republicans have very short memories about the budget deficit and overall mess they left him after their tenure in office. Next he explained the difference in the projections: he assumes a 2.6% growth rate, they a 2.2%. A small difference like that over can mean a lot of money over time. And finally, his cardinal assumption: "If we don't invest in energy, education and health then we don't grow."
Obama was utterly persuasive. "The critics propose no alternative," he said. If we save money now by doing nothing about energy, who thinks the problem will get better or go away? The longer we wait the more it eventually will cost. "We can't wait; we have been delaying for thirty years." On education he observed about China and India, "If they out teach us today they'll out compete us tomorrow." Who thinks neglecting to invest in education now will pay dividends for us down the road? The same with health care. "Health costs will swamp our economy, particularly as our population ages." We cannot compete or balance our budget until health costs are contained. Every day we pay 17% of our GDP on health while our competitors get the job done better for 11% is one more day we fall behind and one more day our costs make us uncompetitive. We can't wait.
Obama gets the big picture. We must act. We have taken the easy choices for too long and now that the day of reckoning is upon us we have to swallow the medicine and do what needs to be done. Obama was successful in balancing the urgency of the need to act with optimism that such action made sense and could work. It is a major achievement to have defused the aura of crisis that gripped the nation a few weeks ago. Perhaps the reason for that is most clearly illustrated by Obama's best line of the night. Ed Henry of CNN badgered the president a bit about why he waited three days after the AIG bailout story broke to register his "outrage" rather than weighing in immediately. In what seems a rarity among the Washington political class, Obama replied, "It took a couple of days because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak."
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