The International House of Bacon

I’m not going to go as far as to say that the wheels are coming off after one spectacularly bad press conference, but if this is what we can expect of Obama when he’s faced with tough (and not even hard) questions from a largely local press contingent, what’s going to happen when he faces some significant questions from a national media?

Some of the spin I’m reading goes along the line of “but he answered 8 questions about it!? What more do you want from the guy?” The problem isn’t the appearance of brevity in the conference - he may have answered a typical amount of questions, maybe even more than usual. The problem is his handling of the only two blemishes that have been thrown on his record so far - the Rezko flap and the NAFTA one. That the media isn’t trusting the Obama campaign’s statements - or the Canadian embassy’s for that matter - on the meeting between Obama’s advisor regarding the NAFTA comment is significant on a number of levels - it indicates the end of taking Obama’s words at face value, and, more importantly, the Obama bait-and-switch tactic we’ve gotten so used to didn’t work, leaving a number of questions on the table about it that Obama didn’t touch.

The Rezko questioning didn’t go much better. That Obama felt he had answered the questions locally two years ago doesn’t much matter today, as the news is back out and is a big deal. Yes, the media is latching onto it because it’s a “hot story,” as Obama says - that’s the story of your campaign!

It will ultimately be interesting to see how Obama handles this going forward. Indications are that he’s going to lose big in Ohio today (still a shock to me considering his pandering on NAFTA) and if he wins in Texas, it won’t be by a significant margin. This means a month more of campaigning, probably another debate, and more questions that he’s not going to want to answer. Will he be a little more poised next time, or have a minor tantrum whenever someone takes the eye off the ball Obama’s placed in front of us for so long?