Best Question: Jake Tapper, ABC News
TAPPER: “The American people have seen hundreds of billions of dollars spent already. And still the economy continues to free-fall. Beyond avoiding the national catastrophe that you’ve warned about, once all the legs of your stool are in place, how can the American people gauge whether or not your programs are working?Can they — should they be looking at the metric of the stock market, home foreclosures, unemployment? What metric should they use? When? And how will they know if it’s working or whether or not we need to go to a Plan B?
Simple. Straightforward. Actually provoked an answer. (“Job creation… normalizing the credit … Have we stabilized the housing market? …Whether we stop contracting and shedding jobs, and we start growing again.”)
Best “Off-Topic (Non-Economic-Stimulus-Related) Question (or, Best Question You Didn’t Anticipate): Ed Henry, CNN
HENRY: There’s a Pentagon policy that bans media coverage of the flag-draped coffins from coming into Dover Air Force Base. And back in 2004, then-Senator Joe Biden said that it was shameful for dead soldiers to be, quote, snuck back into the country under the cover of night.You’ve promised unprecedented transparency, openness in your government. Will you overturn that policy, so the American people can see the full human cost of war?
(Response: The policy is under review.)
Best Tweet: Hyperfix:
CNN just did some weird double shot — showed AP Jennifer Loven asking question from front and back…can the hologram be far behind!?
Moment Most Likely to Get Media Types Talking: The Huffington Post (The Huffington Post!) gets a question.
Greta Van Susteren on Fox News:
I did notice that the Huffington Post got a question, so why can’t Gretawire?
From The Caucus Live Blog at newyorktimes.com:
Huffington Post Gets a Question | 9:03 p.m. Sam Stein, who is covering the White House for the Huffington Post, was called upon by President Obama. It is almost certainly the first time that a Web-based publication was recognized by the president…
Harshest Assessment By Cable Pundits of White House Press’s Performance: Bill O’Reilly and Bob Morris on Fox News:
O’REILLY: What struck me about this was it wasn’t a press conference. It wasn’t. It was tee it up, ok and he had the little list of questioners. If O’Reilly or Morris were there, trust me, he wouldn’t have gotten to us. And then he does ten, twelve minutes ruminating, and I want information. Look, I would have said, “Hey, Mr. President, you’ve got Nancy Pelosi loading this up with all kinds of global warming stuff. What was that all about?” How about that for a question?
MORRIS: He had ridiculous questions.
Highest Praise By Cable Pundit of White House Press’s Performance: Chris Matthews, as noted earlier, on MSNBC:
“Well, I think our breed looked pretty good tonight. I think the press looked very good tonight. They asked great questions. I would be very impressed with the press tonight. Mara Liasson’s, Jake Tapper’s questions, Chuck’s [Todd] questions were sound. I thought they asked interesting questions. They covered a range of American topics from the stimulus package to the situation in Afghanistan and the Pakistan border even to the question of A-Rod. They were asking questions most people want answers to.
Creepiest Helen Thomas Discussion By Cable Pundits: Bill O’Reilly talking to Alan Colmes (also, Fox News):
O’REILLY: The White House press corps looked intimidated to me except the old lady, Helen Thomas, she was yelling, and he just ignored her. [Squawking noise ]COLMES: Is that your Helen Thomas impression?
O’REILLY: It’s like the Wicked Witch of the East. I would have poured water on her. And she would have dissolved.
COLMES: It’s not nice to do that.
O’REILLY: She actually asked a question, Do you think the Taliban’s hiding in Pakistan? That was her question. [ed: No, it wasn’t.] So my question to you is why can’t my mom ask a question? Why can’t my mom…
COLMES: Does your mom have a 40-year journalistic career?
Creepiest Helen Thomas Reference In a Live-Blog: Daniel W. Drezner at foreignpolicy.com:
8:49 PM: Obama loses his Helen Thomas virginity.
Most Frequently-Heard Insta-Observation: His answers were so loooong….
Charlie Gibson on ABC News directly after the press conference:
First news conference since going into the White House. Taking only 13 questions over an hour. Seemingly treating each question almost as a teaching moment with long and expansive answers…
Keith Olbermann directly after press conference on MSNBC:
With the repeated promise that his stimulus program was not only necessary, urgent, but will produce 4 million new jobs… The bipartisanship or lack thereof seemingly the main focus of the reporters in the room. President Obama thus concludes the first news conference as the nation’s 44th president. And yes his answers to two of the first three questions, thorough and eloquent and crafted, were roughly seven minutes long. Each.
Bill O’Reilly, minutes after the press conference, on Fox News:
On a scale of 10 being the best, 1 being the worst, [President Obama] sold [the stimulus] 7.5. Number 1: he was boring. Number 2: He was too long-winded. His first answer was ten minutes long. It was like he was making mini-speeches. You don’t learn a lot from that… If I were at home with a clicker in my hand, a tough hour to get through.
Most Frequently-Used Adjective To Describe Obama’s “Tone:” “Serious” (and its synonyms). Choose your favorite.
New York Times (straight news report): “Mr. Obama’s tone was for the most part serious and businesslike…”
New York Times (“news analysis”): “Authoritative and unsmiling, gloomy rather than inspirational…”
Washington Post: “Somber and focused”
AP (“analysis”): “determined, deadly serious,” “grim-faced leader, rarely smiling or laughing”
Time “a dour and downbeat press conference…”
Boooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggg. Staged, more stand-ins, better actorst. A-Rod on Drugs, he's sorry (stole Phelps' line), news fit to print. Later dude. Kids getting into drugs, worry, now really folks, should we? They have the votes, pass the bill, already, what's with the grandstanding. Much ado about nothing.
Posted by Cho Dan, Kingston, NY on Tue 10 Feb 2009 at 09:47 AM
Poor Bill. The answers were too long and bored him with their substance. What a chore for people with short attention spans and a disdain for the harshness of reality.
Posted by Ron Rosenthal on Tue 10 Feb 2009 at 12:28 PM
Department of how quickly we forget: James Guckert (a.k.a. Jeff Ganno) was the first web-based journalist to be called upon by a president (GB II)--although "journalist" turned out to be something of a misnomer.
Posted by Charles Kaiser on Tue 10 Feb 2009 at 12:44 PM
Most so-called advanced cultures and related societies fail in a critical area, one that should drive people to give people a real sense of scale. We must all drive toward the goal of a NUMERATE SOCIETY. In such a society, people will clearly understand the metrics associated with liquidity. How many TRILLIONS of dollars does it take for the world economy to operate in a bullish period, or boom? And how much wealth destruction must take place in an economy in which people are encourage to go into debt without any sense of how their incomes will permit them to survive when underlying values wilt or crash? What are the numbers? Who knows what a Trillion is CLEARLY. Or a BILLION. Even a MILLION. We are more likely to respond to what Samual Hayakaw, senator and professor of language, called PURR WORDS and GROWL WORDS. A phrase like WEALTH CREATION makes the heart tick faster and gives a sense of fulfillment and achievement. But we don't balance that with WEALTH DESTRUCTION. How much money will an average person earn in a full lifetime of work, on average? What would the 'mean' be, as opposed to average? What is the smallest amount that permits a person to survive in North America? What is the most massive personal collection of wealth and who has it? What does possession of a BILLION dollars permit you to do in our world? These and thousands of other questions derive from the issue of FULL NUMERACY. That is, from a mature sense of the scale of wealth. The ethical questions of who gets most, who gets least and who survives somewhere in the stretch in-between are not my issue. The issue is getting people early on in life to understand what wealth means, what it does for you, how you get it and what you do if you have it or do not have it. NUMERACY is equivalent at least in importance to LITERACY. Even better, we must teach people that arithmetic and calculus need both to be understood. The deep structures (to use the important phrase of a major linguist) within this issue have to do with a full intellectual appreciation of how money matters in human existence, since its multifoliate forms in history have mediated both peace and destruction, massive wealth creation and equally massive wealth destruction, and almost every phase of ordinary human life within our human relationships. It also mediates every form of market, both in goods and services, in some fashion. Even bartering begs the question of value. So all should give a thought for the loose fashion we use concepts of monetary and fiscal scale. Some discipline would add a better discipline to business and the financial markets.
Posted by Greenio on Wed 11 Feb 2009 at 03:11 AM
Let me take issue with this one:
Best Tweet: Hyperfix:
CNN just did some weird double shot — showed AP Jennifer Loven asking question from front and back…can the hologram be far behind!?
Cilizza's @hyperfix has been disappointing, to say the least. His tweets are juvenile, locker-room inanities and completely uninformative and insubstantial. I mean, how is that the "best tweet"? It's idiotic, actually.
Also, you forgot Stupidest, Most Irrelevant Question
Michael Fletcher of Washington Post. The A-Rod question.
What is it with those locker-room adolescents at the Washington Post?
Posted by James on Wed 11 Feb 2009 at 08:02 AM
You're right, James, there is nothing "Best" about this Tweet. I was being sarcastic, overcome by my own fatigue with Twitter-hype and my questions about its journalistic value. But a lot of my doubts, admittedly, come from ignorance. So I welcome recs: if you find Hyperfix "disappointing," who do you find is doing some worthwhile stuff?
Posted by Liz Cox Barrett on Wed 11 Feb 2009 at 11:11 AM