Left And Right Agree: Obama Was ‘Calm’ And Professorial At Meetings With Columnists
Left And Right Agree: Obama Was ‘Calm’ And Professorial At Meetings With Columnists
Earlier this week, President-elect Obama attended a 3-hour dinner party with conservatives at columnist George Will’s house, followed by an hour-long coffee meeting with liberal columnists at his transition offices. Though the conversations were off-the-record, some of the participants — Will, Bill Kristol and EJ Dionne — praised Obama on the Sunday shows this morning for how he approached the meetings.
“Suffice to say that I think he was impressive and probably we weren’t,” said Will on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Both Kristol, a conservative, and Dionne, a liberal, remarked that Obama came off as a “calm” professor when they spoke to him:
KRISTOL: You know, he is privately — this wasn’t really private — but you know, among nine or ten people, he wasn’t really that different from the way he is publicly, you know. Cool, calm, confident. He was like talking to a very intelligent, moderately liberal law professor, you know, debating a bunch of issues.” [Fox News Sunday]
DIONNE: The really striking thing is, it was like we’re around a table and it was like Professor Obama teaching a seminar on how you deal with whole lot of crises at the same time and stay calm. I mean, it was very sort of focused and easy going in the midst of all of this. [ABC'S This Week]
“He is remarkably calm, I found that last week,” added Stephanopoulos, who interviewed Obama last week. Watch it:
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Wow, an adult in the White House, no wonder the right wing manure merchants are befuddled.
January 18th, 2009 at 11:53 amThis is going to give Limbaugh fits. How will Rush demonize “the magic negro” if his right-wing buddies are all praising Obama?
January 18th, 2009 at 11:57 ambarfly:
I assume that he will reference the ability of Caser to handle all of that shit that arose in those Planet of the pes movies.
RIP: Ricardo Monteban
January 18th, 2009 at 11:59 ampes = Apes
January 18th, 2009 at 11:59 amCaesar…
January 18th, 2009 at 12:00 pmDamn!
Personally, I don’t give a rat’s ass what Billy Boy says. Even when it’s complimentary of a Dem.
January 18th, 2009 at 12:00 pmbarfly Says:
This is going to give Limbaugh fits. How will Rush demonize “the magic negro” if his right-wing buddies are all praising Obama?
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there’s a tiny (but important)
vein in his head that’s going
to pop.
* * *
January 18th, 2009 at 12:02 pmWait a minute… These are some of the very folks who have, for the last 8 years, called those of us who think like Obama and wanted a unifying President like Obama ‘unpatriotic’, ‘irrational’, ‘communists’, etc.
So, now it turns out that they see that we’ve been right about having an intelligent and erudite President who is open-minded, and, well, frankly a liberal moderate.
So, why again are they the pundits?
January 18th, 2009 at 12:04 pmThis is just damning with faint praise. When dildos like Kristol refer to “private” meetings with GWB, they always referred to him as “impressive” or “inspiring.”
January 18th, 2009 at 12:04 pmHow did they leave out “clean and articulate”?
January 18th, 2009 at 12:10 pmWhat a change – they were used to seeing an an abusive alcoholic/cocaine addict with a petulant attitude. Now they are dealing with someone that, by all accounts, acts human and civil.
Glad both sides noticed a difference – interesting that the repugs/neocons feel a need to comment on it. The folks on the other side knew this to be the case about Obama all along.
January 18th, 2009 at 12:10 pmI heard somewhere you can starve to death eating rabbit…I wonder how long you can last eating crow?
January 18th, 2009 at 12:13 pmAfter 8 years of a leader who dines with dignitaries and chews with his mouth open; a leader who publicly cleans the lenses of his glasses on the nearest shirttail; a leader who cannot speak in coherent sentences – these guys are stupefied to spend off-the-record time with a leader who is intelligent, has collected his thoughts, and is not one who insults his hosts.
January 18th, 2009 at 12:14 pmKRISTOL: You know, he is privately — this wasn’t really private — but you know, among nine or ten people, he wasn’t really that different from the way he is publicly, you know. Cool, calm, confident. He was like talking to a very intelligent, moderately liberal law professor, you know, debating a bunch of issues.” [Fox News Sunday]
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translation:
“How come they get all the smart guys
and we get stuck with the hillbillies and
the likable idiots?”
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January 18th, 2009 at 12:17 pmNow that everyone agrees that President-Elect Obama is calm, will the rabid right-wing finally calm down?
January 18th, 2009 at 12:17 pmUnbe..
January 18th, 2009 at 12:18 pmYou are absolutely correct when you say that for years, those who reflected thoughts similar to those of Obama were vilified by these very repugniscum — all while they defended the belligerent ignoramus.
Perhaps we’ll really get a liberal media now? LOL (just joking, I know their Corporate owners won’t let them ever do this again…)
January 18th, 2009 at 12:19 pmMarie Says:
After 8 years of a leader who dines with dignitaries and chews with his mouth open; a leader who publicly cleans the lenses of his glasses on the nearest shirttail; a leader who cannot speak in coherent sentences – these guys are stupefied to spend off-the-record time with a leader who is intelligent, has collected his thoughts, and is not one who insults his hosts.
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here’s a highlight reel.
:)
January 18th, 2009 at 12:21 pmI heard a pundit talking about how the Republicans are going to have to figure out a way to “combat” (I believe that was the word he used) an extremely popular president, whose ideas most of the country supports.
Why would they even want to do that? Why do they have to see themselves as “adversarial” rather than “complementary”? They don’t have to oppose everything, especially the stuff the country wants Congress and Obama to do.
January 18th, 2009 at 12:24 pmThere’s a level of authenticity with Obama that we never saw with the phoney cowboy bush. What you see it what you get with Obama – and in his case, I think that really works in his favor.
January 18th, 2009 at 12:44 pmWayne A. Schneider Says: They don’t have to oppose everything, especially the stuff the country wants Congress and Obama to do.
Agreed that the right thing for them to do at this point is to figure out how to join the new President, a man of the people, in fixing what is wrong with America, rather than just making things worse.
But, I say let them just keep digging their own hole bigger and bigger. It’ll be that much easier to bury them once and for all…
January 18th, 2009 at 12:47 pmunbelievable,
My dream is that the Republican Party finally understands that the best interests of Corporate America (large and small) is not necessarily in total alignment with the best interests of the Nation as a whole, and that they understand that they are sent to Washington by the People to serve the best interests of the Nation first and foremost.
I heard one of their paid talking heads (Bob Blakeman, I think is his name) saying that what Obama ought to do is cut the capital gains tax. This will do NOTHING to stimulate the economy. The kind of people who most benefit from a capital gains tax cut are not the kind of people who take that extra money and go out and spend it, which is what is needed. They tend to save it or re-invest it in more stocks, which does not help nearly as much as spending it does. And if they keep all the extra money, the only thing you’ve done by cutting the capital gains tax (at least he didn’t say we had to make the tax cuts permanent, because I would not be responsible for my actions should I meet him on the street) is help make the rich people even richer. What upsets me most is that they know that! Yet they continue to espouse it anyway, as a solution to the financial problems we’re having now. Maybe it was needed in Reagan’s day, but he’s dead now, and he was never really the answer when it came to Economics.
Sorry about the long post.
January 18th, 2009 at 12:54 pmDid Obama eat anything…? !!
January 18th, 2009 at 1:18 pmI admire him if he did, looking at faces of G.Will,Bill Kristol and company.
I think we had best get used to befuddled, hesitant praise from the right and nervous whimpers from the left. Obama is going to drive this thing right down the sweet spot where he can get the maximum support and traction, parties and ideologies be damned. Pure pragmatism.
January 18th, 2009 at 1:29 pmJoe at #18:
ROFL!! A very funny editing of his better moments.
Hmmm, If someone were to string them all together, it could be a feature film!
January 18th, 2009 at 1:38 pmMarie Says:Hmmm, If someone were to string them all together, it could be a feature film!
Would probably get an NR rating due to the sheer inanity.
January 18th, 2009 at 1:59 pmWow, almost like someone fitting to be President.
January 18th, 2009 at 2:18 pmWilliam the Bloody: “He was like talking to a very intelligent, moderately liberal law professor, you know, debating a bunch of issues.”
Wha…?
I thought Obama was a raving socialist who was gonna take away our guns and coddle terrorists? What happened to THAT guy?
January 18th, 2009 at 3:03 pmHe was “calm” at a dinner party. Wow. So, they tried their best to provoke him, and it didn’t work? It was a dinner party, for crying out loud. Guess they’re just talking because they get paid to do it.
January 18th, 2009 at 5:04 pmDon’t care what bill crystal or any of the fox rot think…
January 18th, 2009 at 7:22 pmI think we had best get used to befuddled, hesitant praise from the right and nervous whimpers from the left. Obama is going to drive this thing right down the sweet spot where he can get the maximum support and traction, parties and ideologies be damned. Pure pragmatism.
As long as he keeps pushing the progressive agenda he’s been running on for the last few years, I can afford to whimper now and then. Signs are he means it. That’s a switch from politics as usual all by itself.
January 18th, 2009 at 8:12 pmHe was “calm” at a dinner party. Wow. So, they tried their best to provoke him, and it didn’t work? It was a dinner party, for crying out loud. Guess they’re just talking because they get paid to do it.
Remember that the conservatives in the administration were a collection of suit-and-tie thugs and cranks (see any article on Cheney, Rumsfield, or Addington for examples). The Republican congressial delegation is still run by thugs and cranks, except most of them are of limited intellect (Inofe and Vitter) tantrum throwers and crybabies (McConnell, Beohner). Those right-wing pundits Obama met with consider themselves gentleman intellectuals: it has to be a pleasant surprise for them to meet with a politician who rises to their alleged social standards.
January 18th, 2009 at 8:18 pmkristol: “… He was like talking to a very intelligent, moderately liberal law professor, you know, debating a bunch of issues.”
what’s LIBERAL got to do with it?
January 18th, 2009 at 10:52 pmWould you expert anything less from the 44th President of the United States…
http://yourobamaupdate.blogspot.com/
January 19th, 2009 at 3:14 amSounds like Billy k is prepping to suck up to Obama.
January 19th, 2009 at 5:47 pmTP needs to ignore these fascists. Thier time is done.
The only thing that needs to be reported is the war criminal convictions.
Hague 2009!!!
Investigate 911 Now!!
January 20th, 2009 at 11:26 am