Friday, March 19, 2010

Bret Baier's interview with Barack Obama

The first time I remember seeing Bret Baier was this one-hour news special on Donald Rumsfeld somewhere around 2004. It was the biggest love-letter puff-piece I'd ever seen. Maybe it's because I thought Donald Rumsfeld was turning out to be one of our worst Defense Secretaries in the past hundred years. But I also knew, watching it, that Baier was a star on the rise at Fox News.

I thought Baier did as well as he could have in the interview. He knew he only had 20 minutes, and Obama seemed intent on filibustering with lengthy platitudes, and Baier had no choice but to interrupt to try to get straight answers. So in the end, the first two-thirds of the interview were all on process. I didn't really learn much from the interview beyond process and tactics and procedure.

Obama seemed willing to give more time and less platitudes when Major Garrett interviewed him earlier, but that might be because Garrett's the most impartial reporter FNC has. Obama can criticize Hannity and Beck, etc., all he wants, but kudos to the other journalists for standing up to the White House when they tried to freeze out the entire network.

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