On The Daily Show last night, President Obama acknowledged to Jon Stewart that things have gotten a little crazy since he’s taken office. “The one other thing that might have made a difference is if you held the ‘Rally To Restore Sanity’ two years ago,” Obama said.
Stewart mostly questioned the President on the difference between the rhetoric during the campaign, and the reality of what’s been accomplished: “Are you disappointed in how it’s gone, are you surprised that other people, even your base, can be disappointed, or do you reject that narrative?”
Obama replied that when he first took office, “a whole bunch of my political folks came up and said ‘enjoy this now, because two years from now folks are gonna be frustrated.'” But, he continued, his administration has accomplished a lot. They’ve passed “historic health care reform, historic financial regulatory reform, we’ve done some stuff that folks don’t even know about.”
“What have you done that we don’t know about?” Jon asked. “Are you planning a surprise party for us?” But, he said, though the President “ran with such, if I may, audacity,” that “legislatively it has felt timid at times. I’m not even sure at times what you want of a health care bill.”
Obama replied: “This is, what I think most people would say, as significant a piece of legislation as we’ve seen in this country’s history. But what happens is it gets discounted because the presumption is, well, we didn’t get 100% of what we want, we got 90% of what we want, but lets focus on the 10%.”
Jon explained further: “If I were to try to coalesce whatever criticism of it may be, it’s that you ran on the idea that this system needed basic reform. It feels likes some of the reforms that have passed, like health care reform, have been done in a very political manner that has papered over a foundation that is corrupt.”
“That I think is fair,” Obama said, but added that there have been a lot of restrictions on what he can do because of the legislative process. “If the point, Jon, is that overnight we did not transform the health care system, that point is true,” he said later.
“Well when you put it that way it seems so petty,” Stewart joked.
The topic also turned to the economy. “I remember very clearly you saying,” Jon said, “we can’t expect different results with the same people. And I remember when you hired Larry Summers, I remember thinking, well that seems like the exact same person.”
Obama responded that they were able to “stabilize the system, stabilize the stock market, stabilize the economy,” and “in fairness Larry Summers did a heckuva job.”
“You don’t want to use that phrase, dude,” Jon said.
“Pun intended,” said the President, adding that “Larry was integral in helping to think through some really complicated stuff.”
At the end of the interview, Obama asked: “Can I just make a plug? Just to vote.”
Jon said: “I didn’t know what you were going for there. When you said, ‘can I just make a plug’ I was like are you dropping an album or something?”
[TPM SLIDESHOW: White House Roadshow 2010: Barack, Michelle And Joe On The Trail]
Watch part one:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Barack Obama Pt. 1 | ||||
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Part two:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Barack Obama Pt. 2 | ||||
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Part three:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Barack Obama Pt. 3 | ||||
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