Good One!

Best line of last night's press conference:

The president, expressing his "anger" over bonuses paid to executives whose company received billions of dollars in federal bailout funds, was asked why it took him a few days to voice that anger. "It took us a couple of days," he replied tersely, "because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak."

Ohhh, snap! Of course the "liberal" press has to protect their own, so the answer is being characterized as "cranky". But I think it was a perfect response to Ed Henry's attempt at a stupid "gotcha" question. Someone needs to tell these so-called "journalists" that they're polling at about the level of used-car salesmen in terms of credibility.

When asked a serious question, Obama had his facts and figures and arguments at the ready, and delivered them in a clear. comprehensible way, like this question on cutting the deduction for charitable contributions:

Now, if it's really a charitable contribution, I'm assuming that that shouldn't be the determining factor as to whether you're giving that $100 to the homeless shelter down the street.

And so this provision would affect about 1 percent of the American people. They would still get deductions. It's just that they wouldn't be able to write off 39 percent.

In that sense, what it would do is it would equalize. When I give $100, I'd get the same amount of deduction as when some, a bus driver who's making $50,000 a year, or $40,000 a year, gives that same $100. Right now, he gets 28 percent, he gets to write off 28 percent. I get to write off 39 percent. I don't think that's fair.

But when asked a "gotcha" question, he delivered the smackdown it deserved.

Of course idiots like Matt Drudge and Bill O'Reilly sniff that the press conference was "boring." Here's a news flash: The President of the United States is not there for your entertainment. We have a grownup in the office now, not some overgrown frat boy who cracks jokes about not finding WMD's and gives reporters stupid nicknames.

One thing Barack Obama has been consistently good at doing is staying on message and not letting himself get derailed by celebrity "journalists" trying to provoke a "gaffe" to make themselves look good. Mike Allen at Politico has a revealing article (hat tip to Balloon Juice):

The unspoken contest playing out under the East Room lights: The president wants to deliver a message – in this case, reassurance on the economy and a plug for his budget – and not get tripped up by issues he considers extraneous, or that might overshadow what he wants to say.

Reporters have the opposite incentive: They want to “make news” by getting the president to say something he hasn’t said before, or wasn’t prepared to say – which, by definition, is not his message.

Barack Obama wouldn't play the game. He wouldn't let the reporters "make news." And they're steamed.