The House Oversight committee wants to have a sit-down with Joseph Cassano, the guy at the center of the AIG credit default swap implosion.
Tune in at 8 PM tonight. We’ll have live-blogging at TPM and TPMDC of tonight’s presidential press conference as well as video of the key moments.
Eric Kleefeld dares to go where no one else will and unveils the ‘Bachmann Effect‘.
With special video included.
Fox is featuring one of Frank Luntz’s bogus focus groups for tonight’s coverage of the presidential press conference. How does this “random” sampling grade Obama 10 weeks into his presidency? Luntz just threw that question out to the group a few moments ago: a smattering of As, a few Bs — but most of the group grades Obama at a C so far.
8:07 PM … Cool, down to some questions. Hmmm, maybe not. The AP reporter just why, if it’s been so hard and unwieldy keeping banks and non-bank financial institutions on life-support, we should try to set up a system of taking them over and shutting it down. So, if this bad situation is so bad, why shouldn’t we try to improve it? Good question.
8:11 PM … Not sure I’m getting Chuck Todd’s question. Isn’t the public sacrificing by lots of people losing their jobs and the whole country going into a huge amount of debt? I like Chuck Todd and I’m honestly not planning to criticize every question. Honest. But maybe that question needed to be thought out a little more clearly.
Can we cancel the bonuses of these reporters? (Hey, come to think of it, Todd works for NBC, which is owned by GE. So this just might be doable.)
8:17 PM … Phew … Jake came through with a decent question. It wasn’t looking pretty.
8:27 PM: … Not sure Obama had a really clear or necessarily really good answer on long-term deficits. Orszag, what happened?
8:30 PM … Just occurred to me: I think we’re a half hour into this thing and we haven’t had one real question on the bank bail-out plan the administration just announced? We’re done with that?
8:32 PM … Huh, Ed Henry asks a pretty solid question. Why is Andrew Cuomo getting more action with AIG than you and Tim Geithner are. Come to think of it, yeah, good question.
8:34 PM … Maybe it’s not a simple argument to make but there is an argument behind what Obama’s doing — we need upfront investments to alleviate our structural deficits over time, particularly on the health care front. But he’s not really making that argument. (Okay, making it a bit now. But still, not leading with it.)
8:36 PM … Can’t wait to hear Bobby Jindal’s response after Obama’s done.
8:37 PM … Major Garrett is one cartoonish dude.
8:40 PM … Man, that was an awfully policish question from the Politico version of Mike Allen.
8:44 PM … One of the things with Obama is that he’s just very quick on his feet and has clearly thought through the issues. Change we can believe in. And makes sense why they keep wanting to get him in front of the public.
8:45 PM … Not sure who this Chappell reporter works for (ed.note: apparently he works for Ebony), but who did he think he was actually asking a question about people who are out of work and suffering because of the terrible economy?
8:54 PM … Obama: Steady as she goes … A strong conclusion.
8:58 PM … Yeah, no questions on the whole bank bail out plan. Just strikes me as weird.
Still not clear what Chuck Todd was thinking with that sacrifice question.
One thing that was clear from tonight’s press conference was why the White House keeps wanting to get Obama out in front of the cameras and on TV. Obama has a ready and mainly unflappable command of the issues confronting the country, which I think people find reassuring in itself. In a climate of crisis such as this, I don’t think most people’s focus is ideological. They’re looking for competence and command, a sense that someone is sailing the ship, at helm with a clear sense of where they’re going.
There was nothing particularly soaring about the answers or the exchanges. But it’s not that kind of a setting. What Obama did manage were a few of those ‘gimme a break’ zingers that ends an exchange on his terms.
What did strike me was that there was not a single question on what I think is the question of the day: the Geithner bank rescue plan. I take it that that means that most of the reporters think that issue is largely behind us now unless the market or any clear economic realities say otherwise. For better or worse.
The point of the exercise for the White House seemed summed up in Obama’s clearly heavily-thought-out conclusion, the gist of which was: We just got here. The country’s a huge mess. It’s going to take a long time to dig our way out.
Not a bad point.
(ed.note: Live-blogging of the event below.)