An Angry President

I just finished watching President Obama's news conference. And like most others was struck by his rather "not so cool" answer to CNN White House correspondent Ed Henry's follow up question on AIG.

I used to always wonder how the President and for that matter any President would remember lengthy questions with multiple add-on questions tagged along. But they do. Sometimes they answer in the order they prefer rather than the order in which the questions were asked, nevertheless they still get to them.

But in this case when Ed Henry asked two questions, one dealing with the budget and the budgetary deficit projected by Congress and the other dealing with AIG. The President neatly side stepped the second giving a lengthy answer to the first one. And when Ed pressed him on it, he just lost his cool.


Though his answer was logical, it was'nt genuine. And this begs the questions - What did you know Mr. President? And when did you know it?

While pundits kind of agree that he had no choice but to side step the question, I tend to disagree.

While commentators like Paul Begala and Roland Martin trumpet his so called being in touch with the people strategy, I always believed he will drop this strategy when it was of no use to him. And he did just that. Instead of coming clean and open, he shut the lid on Ed's question tight.

The President, from the beginning, should have stayed out of this "I am outraged" tournament in Washington DC, conducted in the AIG Stadium. It should have been handled at the Treasury department instead of at the White House. But by jumping deep into it just to please the gallery before trying to make a quite exit, came off clumsy.

Mr. Obama should not play to the polls.