http://www.salon.com/news/fox_news/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2010/03/18/obama_fox_interviewFox News' no-calories interview with Obama
War Room
Bret Baier was trying so hard to win, he forgot to ask any real questions
By Gabriel Winant
It’s a pretty special thing to get the chance to sit down with the President of the United States, in the White House, and ask him hard questions about his decisions and ideas. But when Fox News’ Bret Baier did it yesterday, he seemed to think he was doing one of those football sideline interviews, or possibly quizzing a tearfully apologetic celebrity burnout.
Baier seemed not to be expecting a president who was not only able to answer questions fluidly, but was largely uninterested in the peripheral garbage that obsesses broadcast journalists like himself.Baier spent his first ten or so chances to talk trying to get the president to comment on the merits of "deem-and-pass," the procedure now under consideration to pass healthcare reform through the House. "The deem and pass rule, so that Democrats avoid a straight up or down vote on the Senate bill?" The first time, the president tried to explain that a vote for deem-and-pass is really just a vote for healthcare reform. Then Baier asked him again why he supported deem-and-pass, and the president would explain again. Rinse, and repeat.
The reporter leapt in at one point by quoting an email to Fox, which asked, "If the bill is so good for all of us, why all the intimidation, arm twisting, seedy deals, and parliamentary trickery necessary to pass a bill, when you have an overwhelming majority in both houses and the presidency?"
As with each instance, Obama explained that he cared about the substance of the bill, not the procedure by which it passed.
snip//
But possibly the most revealing moment came in the brief follow-up interview on foreign policy. Amidst standard fare about how the U.S. is getting along with Israel, Baier tossed in a question about Iran. But he didn’t ask how the president thought he could prevent nuclear proliferation there, or even the typical, tired questions about whether the president would engage or rule out the use of force. Instead, Baier asked, "If Iran gets a nuclear weapon before the end of your term, will your foreign policy be a failure?"
Get that? The reason Iran is important isn’t geostrategic. It’s not about the security of the United States, or of Israel, or the human rights of people in the country or around the region. It matters because it's another area where the president can be assigned a grade by the pundit class.
Maybe the Fox folks got so used to George W. Bush that they don’t know how to take any president seriously. Or maybe their problem is with the basic format, which they view as a competition, rather than a conversation. As Brit Hume complained afterward about the reporter’s position in presidential interviews in general, "You really can’t win."
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