Dominic Dezzutti of KCNC writes:
While Shaun’s questions were posed well, the President did not give many direct or unpredictable answers. But even though he avoided some questions, President Obama still said quite a bit in the way he responded.
President Obama’s answers were very guarded considering he’s an official candidate for re-election as of a few weeks ago.
Instead of new ideas or fresh proposals that his administration had for the real problems and issues that Shaun brought up, Obama spent more time defending himself and his past decisions.
When Shaun pressed him on jobs, it took President Obama a long time to get back to the real issue of the rising unemployment rate in Colorado. And even when he did, he went back to the “clean energy” issue, as if a solar panel plant or wind mill factory are the only places that can put unemployed people back to work.
A defensive posture and a lack of new ideas in a ten minute interview are not shocking. This interview was not set up to be a miniature State of the Union speech.
However, what the interview told me was that when President Obama gets serious again about campaigning in the West, he will have to dig deep to find that creative optimist he was in 2008. If he brings the same defensiveness and long explanations with him on the campaign trail next year, the record-breaking crowds will not be there to hear it.
