Stay focused on big picture, Obama urges
WASHINGTON -- At his news conference Tuesday night, President Obama was walking a careful line.
He is on the cusp, he hopes, of unlocking the credit crisis and saving the village while simultaneously trying to persuade a populist throng carrying pitchforks not to light any matches that might burn it down.
So he expressed solidarity with those who are outraged that AIG executives were awarded $165 million in bonuses at a time the company was being propped up by billions in federal rescue funds, but he also urged Americans to keep their focus on the big picture.
"We will recover from this recession, but it will take time, it will take patience," he said in a seven-minute opening statement, read from a teleprompter screen. Later, his only flash of annoyance came when pressed by CNN's Ed Henry about his slowness in decrying the AIG bonuses.
"It took us a couple of days because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak," he replied.
Obama touted his proposal to overhaul the financial regulatory system — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is slated to unveil more details Thursday — and pushed for his budget. Obama heads to Capitol Hill today to defend his budget plan.
The president's tone was a mix of the populist — "I'm as angry as anybody about those bonuses," he said at one point, albeit with a calm demeanor — and the professor. "What we have to do is bend the curve on these deficit projections," he said at another.
"It's hard to do both things at once — to say, 'What an outrage! But let's not burn down the building,' " said Andrew Kohut, director of the non-partisan Pew Research Center. "In so many of these cases, he has to say, 'Yes, but ...' "
Bruce Reed, a top White House adviser for President Clinton who now heads the Democratic Leadership Council, called the session "a fireside press conference" aimed at explaining his plan and channeling the country's anger.
Left unchecked, rage over the bonuses could make it harder to get imperiled banks and other companies to participate in federal programs, and it could make it impossible for the White House to get more money from Congress if more bailouts are needed.
The 57-minute question-and-answer forum in the East Room, Obama's second prime-time news conference, came six weeks and a political lifetime after his first one. Since then, he has signed the $787 billion stimulus package and unveiled his $3.6 trillion budget. He's announced his plans to withdraw most U.S. troops from Iraq and to deploy additional troops to Afghanistan.
During those six weeks, the economy has gotten worse; even with Monday's triple-digit rally, the Dow Jones industrial average is 610.66 points lower than it was on Feb. 9. What's more, Republicans generally have united behind a strategy of opposing the administration's economic plans as ill-conceived and too expensive. Although his job-approval rating remains a healthy 63% in the Gallup daily tracking poll, pressure is building for Obama to show concrete results.
The questions Tuesday had a more combative tone than those he fielded at his first prime-time news conference, and his answers had a sharper edge, too. Then, five of 13 questions were focused on economic issues; on Tuesday, nine of 13 were. Asked about bipartisanship then, he expressed the hope to "build up some trust over time" with the GOP. Now, he dismissed Republicans as obstructionists: "Critics tend to criticize, but they don't offer an alternative budget."
Obama was cautiously optimistic, saying the economy has begun to show signs of a turnaround. The administration has in place "a comprehensive strategy designed to attack this crisis on all fronts," he said, ticking off the stimulus spending to create jobs, bank bailout to unlock lending and housing plan to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.
"We've been in office a little more than 60 days," he said as he finished answering the final question. "What I am confident about is that we're moving in the right direction."