Obama's TV blitz hits everything from healthcare to baseball
Sunday was just a warm-up for a week full of presidential public appearances - everything from Letterman to the United Nations. Some suggest he's making up for lost time.
President Barack Obama talks with NBC's David Gregory in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on September 18.
Pete Souza/ White House via NBC/ Reuters
President Obama these days brings to mind “Being John Malkovich.” That’s Spike Jonze’s weird 1999 film in which Malkovich the actor and title character appears in multiple incarnations, sometimes simultaneously. It’s a hilarious bad dream.
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OK, so the president hasn’t actually gotten that strange (although some of his tea partying opponents may disagree). But it seems as if the man has cloned himself.
He’s all over the place: Speeches, town hall cheerleading sessions, radio/YouTube broadcasts. And today he set the Olympic record for appearances on the Sunday morning TV talkfests.
Talk about a glutton for punishment! Having to explain again and again and again (and again and again) the details of your plan for healthcare reform. Not to mention racism in America today just because Banquo’s ghost … no, Jimmy Carter … brought it up days ago.
In fact, Obama covered a wide range of issues in responding to questions from his TV interrogators. Everything from Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden to North Korea and swine flu to the baseball playoffs. (He loves the White Sox but had good things to say about the Cardinals and the Yankees.)
But reforming healthcare in the United States was his main message. And despite the lack of congressional bipartisanship on any of the proposals on Capitol Hill, he says he’s still optimistic that a bill can be passed.
“[T]here are a whole bunch of details that still have to get worked out,” Obama told CNN’s John King. “But what I’ll say is, is that right now I’m pleased that, basically, we’ve got 80 percent agreement, we’ve got to really work on that next 20 percent over the last few weeks.”
