Obama on Fox

I forgot to watch or tape this. This is more crucial than the convention speeches. Facing down "Rush Limbaugh." Not him of course, but his minion Bill O'Reilly.

The TV Watch
Obama Steps Into O’Reilly’s ‘No Spin Zone’

new_york_times:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/us/politics/05watch.html

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Published: September 5, 2008

It was billed as the ultimate smackdown, and it certainly promised to be a wonk vs. wacko match: the cerebral, conciliatory Senator Barack Obama versus Bill O’Reilly, Fox News Channel’s most irascible, combative anchor: a commentator who calls liberals “loons” and “pinheads” and on Thursday’s show described reporters scrutinizing Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as “sniveling, left-wing, wine-drinking, brie-eating.”
The topic was national security, and their tone was civil, but thankfully not too civil: Mr. O’Reilly, as is his wont, spoke brusquely, interrupted, argued and didn’t let his guest off the hook. He told Mr. Obama he had “bloviated” in parts of his convention speech, but congratulated him on his early opposition to the war, saying he had been “perspicacious.”
Mr. O’Reilly then demanded that his guest admit that he was wrong to oppose the military surge. Mr. Obama didn’t give in; he repeated previous qualifications but did go farther, and less equivocally, than before in acknowledging that the surge had worked. “It’s succeeded beyond our wildest dreams,” he said. Mr. Obama is known for the subtlety and nuance of his answers; Mr. O’Reilly has no patience for either. And accordingly, they had a bracing exchange, in what was the first of four segments to be spread over four days.
Mr. Obama has talked to Fox News reporters quite a few times since the primaries began: he sat down with Chris Wallace in April. But this was his first appearance on “The O’Reilly Factor,” and its host has had a prickly relationship with the Obama campaign. Mr. O’Reilly has had to apologize for an unfortunate turn of phrase when discussing Michelle Obama, played videos of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. early and often, and is still underscoring Mr. Obama’s association with William Ayers, a member of the violent Weather Underground in the 1960s (a topic Mr. O’Reilly gleefully said would be debated in Monday’s segment).
Mr. Obama gave no hint of rancor and remained pleasant, respectful and good-humored, but he did adjust his pace and wording to suit his speed-talking host.
The best political interviews knock the subjects off their chosen script, either by getting a rise out the guest or eliciting an unexpected answer. Mr. Wallace of Fox News, who has managed to rattle both Bill Clinton and Karl Rove, is one of the best at goading subjects into unplanned sincerity. And of the network anchors, Katie Couric has stood out more than her rivals.
Her move from NBC to CBS was supposed to be a triumph for the network, and turned out to be anything but. CBS News is still a distant third in the ratings, behind NBC and ABC. Yet during this political cycle and especially during the conventions, CBS’s political team has provided some of the best coverage and Ms. Couric has had more notable interviews. Charlie Gibson of ABC News has a more soothing, avuncular style, and Brian Williams of NBC News is more polished and urbane, but Ms. Couric gets more interesting answers.
On Wednesday night, the CBS anchor asked Senator John McCain’s wife, Cindy, about her views on abortion, and discovered that Mrs. McCain, usually so impenetrably poised and well prepared, had difficulty describing her husband’s position on Roe v. Wade, or her own. (She said he did not want to overturn it, until Ms. Couric assured her that he did oppose Roe v. Wade. Mrs. McCain, looking a bit confused, then said she, too, wanted the legality of abortion to be determined by individual states.)
At the end of the interview, Ms. Couric told her viewers that the campaign had clarified Mrs. McCain’s position: “They told us that, like Laura Bush, Mrs. McCain does not favor overturning Roe v. Wade, which guarantees the legal right to an abortion.”
Especially on a day when the staunchly anti-abortion Governor Palin was being acclaimed by the Republican convention, it was a good question to ask and as, it turned out, a hard one to answer.