In case you missed it, here is the interview Bill O'Reilly did with President Obama, which aired (taped) during the Superbowl.
It's 10 minutes long.
Obama comes off very poorly, in my opinion, and annoyingly avoids answering any direct questions.
I thought Bill O'Reilly did a good job asking the tough questions and being critical, without coming off obnoxious or preachy. Indeed, Obama did almost all of the speaking during the 10 minutes.
O'Reilly first asked Obama about the healthcare.gov debacle, and whether Obama had any clue beforehand that there would be a problem. Obama tried to dance around the problem (saying there "were some glitches expected" lol), but O'Reilly finally squeezed out of him that, no, he didn't expect it to fail to this degree. When O'Reilly brought up that most Americans still feel the site sucks, Obama danced around it and bragged about all of the people under 27 covered on their parents' plan (again lol).
O'Reilly then asked why nobody has been dismissed over the debacle, and Obama again danced around that. He finally said that he's a President who looks forward to solve problems, and doesn't harp on the past.
It's interesting to hear him say that, because I actually believe it.
There was a very interesting article last year written by a fellow Democrat, lamenting the problems with the Obama Administration. She had insider information from fellow Democrats who didn't want to be identified, for obvious reasons. Again, note that this was NOT a right-wing attack article, but rather written by someone in his own party, frustrated with Obama's poor handling of the healthcare.gov debacle. Anyway, the insiders told her that they derisively nicknamed him "No-Drama-Obama", in reference to the fact that Obama absolutely hates dissension within the ranks. So basically everyone walks on eggshells, afraid to suggest to Obama that someone else on the team might be screwing up. It was theorized that this was the problem. Various people knew in advance about various potential fails with the healthcare.gov site (as well as the disaster with people unexpectedly losing their existing health plans), but nobody wanted to say anything to Obama about it, fearing he would get angry about infighting. Basically, everyone learned just to focus on their own little area, and ignore what was going on around them. This led to the epic failsite known as healthcare.gov on October 1, 2013.
So, yes, I believe Obama has an obsession with "looking forward' rather than both learning from the past and focusing closely on the present. There is basically a lack of critical-thinking and self-awareness within the Administration, which is awful.
He was then asked about the Benghazi situation. He totally dodged those questions. O'Reilly repeatedly asked if Leon Panetta told him it was a terrorist attack when it first occurred, since reliable reports indicated that Panetta was told that it was a terrorist attack, so it made sense he would have communicated the same to Obama.
Obama responded with a bunch of nonsense that Panetta told him "it was an attack", but they didn't discuss whether terrorism was involved. Right. Something like that happens, and terrorism is the first thing on your mind. So Panetta was told that it was terrorism, he runs and tells Obama, and somehow terrorism is never brought up? Obviously Obama is lying or covering for someone here, and he comes off terrible attempting to worm out of this line of questioning.
Finally, the IRS situation was brought up, where Tea Party groups were unfairly targeted for audits. Obama again attempted to dance around the situation, and then amazingly says that there was "no corruption" involved, only "some boneheaded decisions". Complete bullshit, and it makes him again look out of touch.
The funny thing is I actually believe that this wasn't a high-level conspiracy against Republicans or the Tea Party. I don't believe Obama knew about this targeting of the Tea Party, but to say that there wasn't some degree of corruption is totally inaccurate. There was definitely corruption in the IRS involving this matter, where they saw an opportunity to exploit Tea Party groups for tax penalties. Perhaps this was done just for monetary purposes, perhaps it was done because of internal hatred of the Tea Party, and perhaps it was some of both, but it was definitely the result of corruption and a violation of American rights. Obama comes off as extremely dismissive here. He would have come off much better if he admitted there was corruption, but simply blamed it on that local Cincinnati IRS office, and flatly denied any White House involvement. I would have actually believed that answer.
Anyway, he came off as someone afraid to answer any direct questions, and a typical slippery politician, who values reputation over transparency.
It's funny to think back to 2008, when Obama excited the country as a different kind of politician who wanted to bring much-needed change to the political landscape.
I don't even believe that Obama is dishonest or a bad guy. I believe he really does want to change America for the better. His heart was even in the right place with the health care reforms. I don't agree with what he did, but I understand why he did it, and indeed the health care system was broken. I don't believe the same as many conspiracy theorists about his Presidency, such as the IRS situation.
However, I do believe that he just isn't an effective leader. He's a great speaker and very charismatic, but just not a good leader from an operations perspective. The Obamacare debacle was a perfect illustration of that.
Now that he has some scandals dogging him, instead of owning up to them and making a few heads roll where they are deserved, he has gone into defensive spin mode, which resulted in this shifty interview.
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Originally Posted by Sanlmar
