Larry King’s Hardball Question

Barack Obama is on Larry King right now and Larry just asked a question for which Obama didn’t have a good answer.

Larry: “Are you surprised by how well you are doing” in the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination?

Obama just stammered around before fixing on saying that “it’s early” in the campaign.  But he was clearly flummoxed. 

Now, Larry King is not known for his hardball questions, but sometimes the questions that do you in are the easy ones.  So always watch out for the easy ones because those are the ones that get you. 

Remember back when the first President Bush was debating Bill Clinton and at a “town hall” debate, a woman asked if the candidates know how much a loaf of bread cost.  Bush answered first and he didn’t know and he stuttered around and basically just solidified the general impression that the preppie from Kennebunkport didn’t have to count his pennies like the working folks.  Bill Clinton then piped up and said that a loaf of bread cost “too much” and went on to talk about how he’s “grow the economy”.  Clinton probably didn’t go grocerty shopping any more than Bush, but he was prepared for the easy question. 

What should Obama have answered?  Hmmmm.  It’s a tricky balancing act.  He doesn’t want to be widely considered the frontrunner, because part of his potency as a candidate is based on people “discovering” him.  He doesn’t want to insist he’s at the bottom of the polls because it’s simply not true.  Besides, people like to support a winner.  But he doesn’t want to appear arrogant, either. 

I probably would have wanted to hear him say something like, “that’s about the most flattering question I’ve been asked on the campaign trail so far, Larry, and I’ve been asked just about everything.  Certainly, I am really gratified that voters are listening to me and I think that voters have been searching for a while for a candidate who reflects their beliefs.  Balanced budget, honesty in government, care for our veterans….”  and so on and so on….

Anyone know a good webhosting co?

My email is down and I can’t get my webhosting company on the phone.  Nobody answers — it just send me to voicemail.  I have had it with the budget webhosting.  Anyone know a good webhosting company that actually answers the phone? 

I can’t believe how crippling it is to have your email on the fritz.  When I started in journalism, some newsrooms I worked in still had manual typewriters.  My first newsroom with computers was a joke.  You couldn’t electronically send your story to your editor.  You had to save it on a big floppy disc and walk it over to the editor’s desk and put it in the In Box.   

If you like what you see here…

You might want to check out my website.  Go to www.sastewart.com and you’ll see that all my opinions on the media are rooted in my many lives as a reporter, TV commentator, PR exec, producer, author.  I feel like I grew up in a newsroom because I had my first paying journalism job before I was 20.  Now that I own my own PR firm in beautiful downtown Santa Monica, I feel like I am still a journalist — I just have a different beat. 

Heading into Year Five

So the war in Iraq is now heading into its fifth year and TV news is all over it, re-running video from the days when George W. Bush was riding high with 67-plus percent approval ratings and declaring the “mission accomplished”.   Caught Bush’s speech to America this morning and it struck me how much he’s aged since he started this whole mess and how much his approval ratings have sunk to below 30 today.  

But some things don’t change.  He’s still urging us to give his strategy a chance and saying that we can’t withdraw because the war on terror is hard work and we have to be patient.  His surge may be a new tactic, but he’s still spouting the same old message: 

    “Four years after this war began, the fight is difficult, but it can be
won.  It will be won if we have the courage and resolve to see it through,”  Bush said in his speech this morning. 

This is the same rhetoric that we’ve been hearing for five years.  He’s never specific and I think a lot of Americans have turned against the war because Bush is vague in his communications to us about the war.  Instead of giving us facts, Bush’s message remains the same: We need to be patient because war is really hard work. 

Instead of going around firing U.S. Attorneys, maybe Bush’s advisers should concentrate on telling us something new, giving us facts instead of patriotic platitudes.