The Presidents News Conference

I watched President Obama’s news conference last night. Afterward I flipped around and listened to the pundits, both positive and negative.

I didn’t think the President was angry when he responded to a follow-up question from CNN on what took him so long to publicly react to the AIG bonuses. I thought Obama was direct in his answer. He said he wanted to think about his reaction before he spoke publicly. A CNN pundit thought he was angry in that comment. I think CNN was looking for something that wasn’t there.

I also didn’t think Obama was on the defensive from what is called a usually supportive press. I’ve never seen the press collectively supportive of anything. There is too much diversity and competitiveness in the ranks for any consensus. Each and every press questioner would like his or her question to be the headline the next day. It validates their pay grade and purpose.

Before any of us can say Obama was great and brilliant or he was lecturing and didactic, we need to remember that news conferences are all for show and all of us are participants because we watch and wonder.

It’s a one act play in which all of us are both players and audience at the same time. Since we don’t know the lines it becomes an improv drama in which we validate or castigate the statements we hear based upon our level of understanding and our knowledge of what is real or better yet what we think is real and what we think we know. But let’s be truthful, most times we don’t know what is really real and we know far less than we think we do.

Why is that? Political obfuscation comes to mind and so does the fact that we the people don’t take the time to read, research or intellectually understand the global ramifications of even a simple Presidential decision. Unfortunately, we rely on others to do our thinking for us. We are visceral people. We vote, think and react on emotion and we forget intellect and reason just as easily as we cast aside ethics and morality if it suits us.

Every President has an agenda and it behooves them to glean support in any way they can. President Reagan used charm. President Bush used fear. President Obama is using intellect and logic. Maybe some day plain truth will be the norm.