by Keith
Koffler on August 21, 2012, 11:20 am
The White
House is doing something with its local TV interviews that it could not easily
get away with in encounters with the White House press corps, which President
Obama has been studiously ignoring: choosing the topic about which President
Obama and the reporter will talk.
In
interviews with three local TV stations Monday, two from states critical to
Obama’s reelection effort, Obama held forth on the possibility of
“sequestration” if he and Congress fail to reach a budget deal, allowing him to
make his favorite political point that Republicans are willing to cause
grievous harm to the economy and jobs in order to protect the rich from tax
increases.
Obama Monday
threw the White House press corps a bone by suddenly appearing in the briefing
room for 22 minutes and taking questions from a total of four reporters. It was
his first press conference at the White House – albeit in miniature – since
March, and only his second of the year. Obama before Monday had taken exactly
one substantive question from White House reporters since June.
But the
three other interviews Obama also held Monday pointed to the advantage he gets
by focusing on local press, with whom he has been speaking more regularly.
Under
sequestration, if a budget deal is not reached by the end of the year, harsh
automatic spending cuts will occur. Each of the network reporters were from
cities with major military facilities that could be unduly impacted if
sequestration occurs.
Two of the
reporters were from Norfolk, Virginia and Jacksonville, Florida, both
presidential battleground states. The third was from San Diego.
The
reporters mostly made no effort to hide the arrangement. “The president invited
me to talk about sequestration,” NBC 7 San Diego’s reporter told her audience.
In the interview, she set Obama up with a perfectly pitched softball the
president couldn’t have been more eager to take a swing at:
“What do you
want individual San Diegans to know about sequestration?” she asked.
Donna Deegan
of FCN Jacksonville initially seemed to apologize for not broaching the
appointed subject right away.
“Mr.
President, I know we were asked to talk about sequestration today,” she said,
but then added she wanted to talk about something else first. Finally, she got
to it:
“Let’s talk
a little bit about sequestration, because I know that’s why you invited us
here,” she said.
Obama used
an interview with WVEC Norfolk to specifically bash Republicans.
“The only
thing that’s standing in the way of us getting this done right now is the
unwillingess on the part of some members of Congress, and folks in in the
Republican Party, to give up on some tax breaks for people like me who don’t
need them,” he said.
The
reporters were able to ask about other topics. But with their face time with
the president limited to under ten minutes, and Obama well rehearsed to discuss
at length his favored topic, there was little room for much else to come up.
obama
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