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Obama On 60 Minutes: “Leadership Isn’t Just Legislation”

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President Obama taped an interview with Steve Kroft for tonight’s 60 Minutes before departing for India. In it he tells Kroft that one of the reasons the voters have responded they way they they did on Tuesday was because his administration didn’t properly communicate (over about a gazillion interviews) what they were doing and that “leadership isn’t just legislation.”

However! That’s not to say all that legislation wasn’t necessary. Says Obama:

I think that what happened over the course of two years was that we had to take a series of big, emergency steps quickly and most of them in the first six months of my Administration. Each of them had a big price tag. You’ve got intervention in the banks. You’ve got the auto bailout. You’ve got a stimulus package. Each one with a lot of zeroes behind it. And people looked at that and they said, “Boy, this feels as if there’s a huge expansion of government…. What I didn’t effectively, I think, drive home, because we were in such a rush to get this stuff done, is that we were taking these steps not because of some theory that we wanted to expand government. It was because we had an emergency situation and we wanted to make sure the economy didn’t go off a cliff.

Watch a preview of the tonight’s interview below. One suspects this “messaging was the problem” argument is going to run out of legs sooner than later.

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  • Big Eddie

    That’s right . He should talk more . We’ll be in the backseat , waiting .

    http://politics.usnews.com/opinion/mzuckerman/articles/2010/11/05/mort-zuckerman-americas-love-affair-with-obama-is-over.html?PageNr=1

    Obama . Talk less . Listen more . You’ve got two big ears .

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmaTNf4YhEs

  • Seeing 2012 From My Window

    Obama and Pelosi are both delusional. They actually think they lost due to poor messaging! They just do NOT get it! But it’s to their detrement, so fine by me.

  • tatboy

    This is great. I hope the Dems stick with this plan. “It’s the way we communicated our legislation, NOT the actual legislation… Oh no it could be that.” And Nancy is going to fight to stay in power!!! AWESOME!!! The most polarizing figure in modern time (even MORE than GWB) and she is going to fight to stay the leader and be front and center… a San Fran liberal. Sweet.
    No matter what anybody tells you guys, this is a good idea, and please oh please don’t let anybody dissuade you from it. This just keeps getting better. It’s like Christmas and New Years all in one.

  • ModerateMan

    When you’ve lost Glynnis MacNicol……….

  • timzank

    The plan to forge ahead with this message should leave no doubt in anyones mind, Obama is an true idealogue. I am thrilled he and Nancy & Harry see it as the way to go, I’m just surprised they would after Tuesday’s results.

  • The ReaI Royal King

    Wow. Oblahblah”s really sticking with this excuse? He’s too smart not to get it. This is pure arrogance, plain and simple.

    Big mistake.

  • Puter Boi

    “It was because we had an emergency situation and we wanted to make sure the economy didn’t go off a cliff.”

    Hey….wait a second….I thought it was in a ditch…..
    Ditch….cliff….cliff…ditch….
    There is a difference and I would like to know which it is…..it’s important…..I demand an answer….
    Call me…

    BARTENDER!!!!

  • Seeing 2012 From My Window

    HAHA, add Mira Liasson to the delusional list, she just compared Pelosi to Winston Churchill on Fox News Sunday.

  • timzank

    Seeing 2012 From My Window said:
    HAHA, add Mira Liasson to the delusional list, she just compared Pelosi to Winston Churchill on Fox News Sunday.

    Just keeping that NPR lib “cred” going for job security’s sake!

  • ChrisNH

    The most ‘brilliant’ among us couldn’t do the most basic of things: ‘communicate.’ I think we need to erase the word ‘brilliant’ from Obama’s resume. The media told us he was that, and now you understand why many of them are swinging from nooses now (metaphorically speaking, or otherwise).

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Mangan/100000213524770 David Mangan

    Oops, zapped TRR for the one time he made sense. Sorry. Let’s see. Car in a ditch/scratch. Keys to the car/scratch. This cretin/moron/imbecile has worn out many teleprompters with his constant, incessant comments on everything from the NCAA basketball championships to why Health Care trumped job formation [!?!] He is on the air constantly—the nets think that the more we see Obama, the more we like Obama. Somewhere in the early part of ’09, people stopped listening and started to reconsider whether or not it was a mistake to elect a narcissistic and often silly dude to be POTUS. At least GWB STFU compared to this noisy idiot, whose policies are now hurting the country worse than GWB’s ever did.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Mangan/100000213524770 David Mangan

    “HAHA, add Mira Liasson to the delusional list, she just compared Pelosi to Winston Churchill on Fox News Sunday.”

    Maybe Winston C in 1945 when Britain elected the socialist nutcases who went on to destroy the UK were elected???

  • lantian50

    welcome to :
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    This is a shopping paradise

  • Greg

    “Not only were conservatives an unusually large part of the electorate in 2010, but they also voted unusually heavily for the GOP by 84 percent to 14 percent. This margin is substantially higher than the GOP has attained in any election going back to 1988. Even in 1994, they carried conservatives by “only” 81 percent to 19 percent. Moderates supported Democrats this year by 55 percent to 42 percent. By contrast, they backed Democrats 61 percent to 37 percent in 2008 and by 60 percent to 38 percent in 2006. Yet the 2010 margin among moderates is very similar to that attained by congressional Democrats in elections prior to 2006 going back into the 1990s.

    In sum, this cycle saw a substantially older, whiter, and more conservative electorate than in 2008. This in and of itself explains a good deal of what happened in 2010. Voters in 2010 also said that they split their vote evenly between Obama and McCain in 2008 (45 to 45 percent), meaning that McCain voters were therefore strongly overrepresented in the 2010 electorate. Indeed, President Obama might not have been elected if only 2010 voters had voted in the 2008 election.”

    http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/78936/jobs-and-apathy-drove-the-election

  • ModerateMan

    The ReaI Royal King said:
    Wow. Oblahblah”s really sticking with this excuse? He’s too smart not to get it. This is pure arrogance, plain and simple.

    Big mistake.

    When you’ve lost The Real Royal King you really……………………..!!!!!

    I think Ted is all that is left.

  • writer

    Something’s wrong. The King has never made a sensible post.

  • VRWC Destruction Machine

    The ReaI Royal King said:
    Wow. Oblahblah”s really sticking with this excuse? He’s too smart not to get it. This is pure arrogance, plain and simple. Big mistake.

    Obama is still thinking like an academic. He never bothered to develop any street smarts. He always felt he was meant for the podium, not the round table.

  • Seeing 20I2 From My Window

    And where is the Birth Certificate??!!

  • cjd ohio 1

    seeing 2012, oh no please dont go there

  • PC Kryptonite

    OMG, Barack Hussein Obama mmm, mmm, mmm really has contempt for the American people so it’s our fault? I guess we’re just to backwards, unsophisticated, uneducated and bitter clingers to summon up enough cerebral comprehension to understand his message.

    Oh we got your message Barack Hussein Obama and it’s been totally REJECTED, just like he and his pack of radical Marxists buddies will be totally EJECTED in 2012! I think the American people have been sufficiently aroused from their lethargy that this type of national election mistake won’t be repeated in future because warning signs will be heeded.

    Down with Fabian socialism and the progressive agenda, and take that (spooky dude) punk Soros with you!

  • Greg

    The story of the election? Older whites were energized by an active disinformation campaign that demonized the President and his party… The coalition that responded so well to Obama in 2008 voted in limited numbers.

    Bottom line… Too few Americans understand economic reality and the president must do a better job of fighting back in the information war.

    “According to a new Bloomberg poll, six in ten Americans think most of the money spent to rescue banks will be lost forever. Six in ten think the economy shrunk over the past year. One in two think federal income taxes have gone up in the past two years.”

    http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/10/5-reasons-americans-are-so-wrong-about-major-economic-facts/65397/

  • CAconservative

    The reason the voters rebuked Obimbo’s agenda is because, what little the voters were allowed to hear, they didn’t like! What we saw was a Obimbo’s government taking advantage of a perceived emergency. Running the very same scare tactics on us that he accuses the GOP of doing when they started pointing out the transgressions on personal choice that most of his oppressive legislation entails. What the voters told this quasi-socialist president was, get the hell out of our personal lives, and leave the free-market alone. This Lame-government is not the only one that can take advantage of an emergency. The second voter emergency will occur in 2012 when we will again sweep out the trash.

  • Seeing 2012 From My Window

    cjd ohio 1 says:
    seeing 2012, oh no please dont go there

    That wasn’t me, it was a lib poser!

  • cjd ohio 1

    shit your are right , sorry seeing 2012, i see the I instead if the 1

  • Seeing 2012 From My Window

    Greg says:

    Bottom line… Too few Americans understand economic reality and the president must do a better job of fighting back in the information war.

    Greg, the “American’s are too stupid to understand economics” just doesn’t work anymore.

  • Seeing 2012 From My Window

    No worries, cjd ohio 1! They are so obsessed with me that they want to actually be me. I take it as a compliment!

  • Greg

    Seeing 2012 From My Window said:
    Greg says:

    Bottom line… Too few Americans understand economic reality and the president must do a better job of fighting back in the information war.

    Greg, the “American’s are too stupid to understand economics” just doesn’t work anymore.

    November,

    I presented evidence by way of polling which demonstrates a disjunction between impressions held by American majorities and reality. Respond to that if you can, otherwise your simple denial is the worst sort of clap trap.

  • DrFunke

    Leadership is standing up for what you believe in without bowing to others who have NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER in helping the country

    Obama’s garbage strategy of talking to Republicans and conceding anything whatsoever has failed miserably and will continue failing miserably in the future

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