Kudos to Baier for Showing How to Handle Obama

Health care interview was 'startling and revealing'

By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff

Posted Mar 19, 2010 5:30 AM CDT

(Newser) – Fox's Bret Baier performed a vital public service in his "startling and revealing" interview with President Obama on health care, writes Peggy Noonan. Unlike the vast majority of reporters, Baier refused to let Obama filibuster his way through the interview, and by doing so exposed the amazing fact the the president still doesn't know exactly what's in the bill, Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal.

Baier "forced the president off his well-worn grooves," Noonan writes. Some might label him rude or impertinent but Baier seemed driven by a genuine desire to get new information and better inform the public. Presidents have the right to expect a certain deference, Noonan writes, but we need to remember that they work for us and "now and then you have to press, to either force them to be forthcoming or force them to reveal that they won't be. Either way it's revealing." By the way, Noonan thinks postponing the president's trip to Indonesia (again) to get health care reform passed is pathethic. "How bush league, how undisciplined, how kid's stuff."

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Baier "was like a low-speed bumper car" in the Obama interview, Noonan writes. (Fox News)

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President Obama discusses health care reform with Fox's Bret Baier. (FoxNewsChannel)

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It revealed what the president doesn't want revealed, which is that he doesn't want to reveal much about his plan. This furtiveness is not helpful in a time of high public anxiety. - Peggy Noonan

One should probably take pains to demonstrate that one is attempting to speak with disinterest and impartiality, in pursuit of which let me note that Glenn Beck has long appeared to be insane. - Peggy Noonan

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Kudos to Baier for Showing How to Handle Obama