Journamalism, Part 3,794

Obama invites the serious journalists at the oh-so-serious New York Times for a private interview on Airforce One. Hilarity ensues.

NYT: "The first six weeks have given people a glimpse of your spending priorities. Are you a socialist as some people have suggested?"

Obama: "You know, let's take a look at the budget – the answer would be no."

NYT: "Is there anything wrong with saying yes?"

Roll that around in your brain pan for a bit. The Obama administration wants to reform health care so that it is (more or less) universal and affordable, while taking care not to take away existing coverage that people like. He wants to change spending priorities to that more is used to support non-carbon fuel energy resources. And he wants to make education a greater spending priority. At his urging, we have injected billions into Wall Street financial titans. Meanwhile, he has rejected calls to nationalize insolvent banks.

Oh, and he wants to raise the marginal tax rate on individuals earning more $200,000 and joint filers earning more than $250,000 two percentage points. And a reporter from Pravda The New York Times, wonders if he considers himself a socialist.

Dan Froomkin observes,

It's not easy to shock our famously unflappable president. But when Peter Baker of the New York Times asked Barack Obama during an interview on Air Force One on Friday if he was a socialist, that's exactly what happened.

Obama initially replied with a denial and a largely boilerplate answer about his budget plan. But some 90 minutes later, he called the Times back to express his disbelief that the question was actually intended seriously, to castigate critics who have been using the term against him -- and to point out that it was George W. Bush, not he, who started buying up shares in banks.

It was another lesson for Obama in the ways of Washington, where Republican calumnies still make it into the mainstream political discourse with alarming ease.