By Jacqueline Klingebiel

Jan 17, 2010 11:27am

Roundtable Report Card

Late last year when Oprah Winfrey asked President Obama to give himself a grade for his first year in office, he gave himself a "good solid B+."   Well, the This Week roundtable took out their red markers and handed out their Presidential report cards.

George Will:    B- 
Tucker Carlson:   D
Donna Brazile:    B
Katrina vanden Heuvel:  B

Watch Video HERE:

User Comments

what a great debate on health care scam. great job to the men on the panel putting it to the two liberal woman.

Posted by: jr | January 17, 2010, 11:50 am 11:50 am

Katrina vanden Heuvel is not my favorite guest, but if you are going to have her, please keep her from monopolizing the entire conversation

Posted by: Jeff | January 17, 2010, 11:56 am 11:56 am

Totally agree with Jeff. Katrina vanden Heuvel is an abominable guest, spouting endless opinions without backing them up with a single fact. Can you please find someone else to occupy the left of center chair in future broadcasts?

Posted by: Marcia McLean | January 17, 2010, 11:59 am 11:59 am

GEORGE WE MISS YOU!! Probably not as much as George Will does…he looked positively miserable with the lack of moderator control. Sorry, as viewers we knew we were going to take a hit when you left; but if you don’t get someone in that seat that can control and give fair time to all panelists their going to loose us as viewers.

Posted by: H M | January 17, 2010, 12:01 pm 12:01 pm

Is there anyone more arrogant and
patronzing to the leftie loons as
that Katrina VandenHeuvel? I guess
the only good thing that comes out
of her being a guest is to show
how dysfunctional and dillusional
the left is.

Posted by: wis134 | January 17, 2010, 12:14 pm 12:14 pm

MISS YOU GEORGE. I THINK YOU SHOULD GET RID OF KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL, SHE JUST LOVES TO SEE AND HEAR HERSELF TALK. SHE DOES MONOLPOLIZE. GEORGE WOULD NOT HER GET AWAY WITH IT. SMILE

Posted by: Ann Sewalk | January 17, 2010, 12:16 pm 12:16 pm

To Whom:
I am democrat that supports Obama and the efforts being made to make this world a better place. Your news network seems to be bent on stirring up negative feelings about the US efforts in Haiti. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Even though many people that your news people are interviewing have spoken of the difficulty of getting to stranded people, getting supplies out to the countryside, your news people continue to focus on what isn’t being done. You are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Step up, start a movement of focusing on what is being done realizing that ‘rapid deployment’ can only be so rapid given the entire island was devastated. Quite tearing down and start helping to rebuild. Your continued spew of complaining about what isn’t being done in a dire situation only takes away from the effort to help.
Kait T

Posted by: Kait Teachout | January 17, 2010, 12:28 pm 12:28 pm

Whew! Thank you fellow bloggers. I’m a first time viewer of This Week. Until I read that you too felt Ms. VandenHeuvel’s remarks were without substance, I hadn’t a notion to watch again. I hope ABC listens.

Posted by: Dee | January 17, 2010, 12:42 pm 12:42 pm

George I don’t think that Jake Tapper is cut out to host This Week…As my grandma used to say, “he likes to stir the pot” and although debate is a good thing he comes off as a trouble maker. Poor George Will and Donna Brazile looked like they wanted to throw up. The final blow was having Tucker Carlson, he is as bad as having Liz Chaney on last week. The format of This Week looks like it is turning into a grip session where everything is picked apart. If people think they can provide better support to Hati then by all means get a plane ticket today. We already know what happened in New Orleans. This show needs some help and fast.

Posted by: Paula | January 17, 2010, 12:45 pm 12:45 pm

And Jake… you have an obligation to moderate the panel you invite to the table. You allowed her to demean American dissent three times with the use of a disgusting moniker which you know is both incorrect and intended to offend. A better host would have stopped the show and demanded she either explain her comment or defend the use of it to offend the American public. You left that task to Tucker and that is unacceptable. Thank you Tucker for calling her out. The response should have been and should be in future more direct and more immediate.

Posted by: Robnoak | January 17, 2010, 12:54 pm 12:54 pm

After a year of listening to crazies like Sarah Palin telling us our grandmothers would be murdered by our government and watching lobbyists from both the drug and health care cartels march on Washington bribing one senator after another, is it any wonder that the American public is left feeling shell shocked and discouraged by reform. It’s a shame the Democrats don’t march in lock step like the Republicans, or maybe we would have had health care reform much sooner. The problem not discussed this morning is that Democrats are taking money from lobbyists just as much as Republicans. If the people of Massachusetts think the answer lies in switching from one corporate sponsored Democrat to another corporate sponsored Republican to fix the system, they are sadly mistaken. Until the American people demand publicly financed campaigns and learn to tell the difference between fact and fiction, truth and propaganda, how can we expect reform?

Posted by: s. durrell | January 17, 2010, 1:30 pm 1:30 pm

Jake dont let the libs tell you are not a good host. Letting those very dangerous liberal woman spu there garbage was a good thing. then letting the men especially carlson to slam those mentally distured woman.

Posted by: jr | January 17, 2010, 1:34 pm 1:34 pm

Why was my comment from today at 12:26:50 PM removed from your site? It was as follows:
I’m glad that Katrina vanden Heuvel is a guest. It helps to know what distortions the liberals are spreading and what their agenda is.
Today she asked:
” Why should the teapublicans, these tea party baggers, deform what is real about this country – which is communitarianism, which is about a strong government?”
That led me to try to learn something about “Communitarianism.” It started as something the Tea Party goers that I know strongly support and practice and is now being morphed into something akin to Communism.
I wish that Katrina’s comment could have been responded to by George Will.
(I removed the link to quotes on Communitarianism, in case links aren’t allowed.)

Posted by: Lenora | January 17, 2010, 1:59 pm 1:59 pm

Katrina vanden Heuvel must be the new Janeane Garofalo. This woman couldn’t shut her mouth and give someone else a chance to speak. Anytime she is on I will not watch. She is a very ignorant person.

Posted by: katy winters | January 17, 2010, 3:43 pm 3:43 pm

The economy will bounce back. Government spending created many jobs in the Great Depression, Hoover Dam for example. Some paint that as socialism, others as a wise public investment — saw a cool site; Balkingpoints ; incredible satellite view of earth

Posted by: mike walker | January 17, 2010, 4:05 pm 4:05 pm

yea mike the economy will bounce back if big government gets the hell out of the way. wise up mike. go scott brown save this country.

Posted by: jr | January 17, 2010, 4:56 pm 4:56 pm

Kait T, kind of like what they did to Bush durning Katrina. People are learning that you can’t get help to people any faster by critizing someone.

Posted by: whatsgoingonhere? | January 17, 2010, 7:38 pm 7:38 pm

The most interesting, and unique thing on this panel, which is taboo and never mentioned in the MSM was Katrina vanden Heuvel’s comment that, “President Obama … didn’t break with the ‘national security consensus’, which so many believed he could have had the courage to do.”
Heuvel did not quite say ‘national security state’, but like horse-shoes and hand-grenades, close is good enough. Her clear and correct point in grading Obama (and our disappointment with him) is that he did not confront the national security state, the CIA and MIC, the “Secret Team” (as Fletcher Prouty exposes it), and the ruling-elite corporate/financial/militarist EMPIRE which controls ‘our’ country by hiding behind the facade of its two-party ‘Vichy’ sham of democracy (as I call it).
Yes, Katrina, Obama is on the fence. He certainly knows that this hidden ruling Empire is the single proximate cause of all the symptomatic ‘issues’, problems, sorrows that we are distracted by and that the corporatist media allows to be debated — but Empire is the cancerous tumor.
Obama has several times now been “put in a fix” (as Gen. LeMay taunted JFK about Cuba), and Obama has already, in his Nobel address, quoted JFK’s American University (6/22/63) public confrontation with the ‘national security state’, the ‘shadow government’, the Empire.
Obama will soon have to decide whether he will confront this Empire, whether the American people will support him, and whether he has the courage to actually attempt to save our democracy, our people, and our world from Empire.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine

Posted by: Alan MacDonald | January 17, 2010, 8:47 pm 8:47 pm

Still gets a D- hasen’t acomplished anything and Transparency as promised is non exsistant behind closed door bribes to pass health care that the majority of voters do not want. Lies about illegals and their status, spin about job creation. unemployment still riseing, terrorists getting treated as american citizens in the courts,maybe it should be F-.

Posted by: earl | January 18, 2010, 6:53 am 6:53 am

I agree. Obama & this Democrat congress gets an F-. If we don’t end this one party rule, this country is headed toward 3rd world status, and I believe that’s exactly what Obama wants. Which is why Rush was dead-on when he said he hopes he fails, because if Obama fails, America wins!

Posted by: Dan In SC | January 18, 2010, 8:58 am 8:58 am

Being a tad left of franco or mussolini is known as Left in US; a tad right of mussolini and a tad left of hitler is known as Right.
And when it comes to killing innocent aliens there is, on moral level, just one mm gap btwn left and right in US.
tnx

Posted by: bozhidar balkas vancouver | January 18, 2010, 9:55 am 9:55 am

I agree with Katrina on the factcheck comment-Most of the bailout is not in Detroit but is backing up AIG which is definitely a backdoor bailout of the banks. George Will really missed on this one.

Posted by: Disappointed in George | January 18, 2010, 12:38 pm 12:38 pm

Geogre may have started it!Barrack has changed us to a Banana Republic!

Posted by: rckinscooter33 | January 18, 2010, 12:52 pm 12:52 pm

Jake you disapointed me in the lack of control that you had. Yes Katrina didn’t shut up, but that was due to both Jake and George not sounding off. Another poster was right, if this continues the audiance will leave. All guests need to realize that this is a talk show and not a blame or yell show.

Posted by: Dino | January 18, 2010, 3:11 pm 3:11 pm

Ms. Vanden Heuvel is way out of line with her vulgar repeated “teabag” references. Some semblance of respect for a significant segment of the population would be appropriate, Ms. Vanden Heuvel. Or do you even offer that to people with whom you disagree?

Posted by: knickerbocker | January 18, 2010, 3:56 pm 3:56 pm

Jake Tapper was fine. He’s a solid journalist who’s always been fair in my mind. I’ll bet he’ll get better as time goes on as well. This is a very different exercise for him and he deserves a little time to find his personal style as a moderator. The important thing is he does his homework and he has integrity as far as I can tell. Keep it up, Tapper.

Posted by: knickerbocker | January 18, 2010, 4:03 pm 4:03 pm

Solid B+ Obama gave himself,he must have graded on the curve.
Stimulus grade F
No Pork grade F
Health Care on C-span grade F
Cap and Trade he wants to pass grade F
Jobs created grade F
Terrorist buddy – buddy grade F
Nebraska back room deal grade F
Louisiana back room deal grade F
Union back room deal grade F
GM and Chrysler bailout grade F
Cash for Clunkers grade F
I could go on but I won’t, Obama you are failing with a Solid F.

Posted by: Johnny L | January 18, 2010, 5:13 pm 5:13 pm

There can be only one grade for failure to properly prioritize issues to deal with.
D is the right grade.
The number one issue was jobs, and jobs was lowest on the rung of issues dealt with, by Obama. Even now, he is paying minimal attention to jobs at home, and that is costing him big time, in the polls.

Posted by: Rick McDaniel | January 19, 2010, 10:40 am 10:40 am

It is systemic; i.e., of system of rule to eschew study of and discussion-evalation of it.
A collumnist dare not touch the system;i.e., the structure of governance and society; s/he only dares sell people snake oil.
Media’s assigned role appears to be writing ab ‘stars’ or engage in ad hominem praise and blame, or dwell solely on periphry of important issues.
And no to mention lies, halflies, etc.
more cld be said. tnx

Posted by: bozhidar balkas vancouver | January 22, 2010, 2:53 pm 2:53 pm

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