President Obama had his big press conference on Monday night and there were whole minutes of it that appeared to be non-scripted.
After the president was able to tear himself away from staring raptly at the Teleprompter he took selected questions from his volunteer press office, otherwise known as the White House press corps.
Unfortunately, some questions actually had to be asked about what he was going to do as opposed to his answers which seemed to revolve mainly around what other people had done, or not done, or that he had imagined they had either done or not done.
After a while it got kind of hard to tell what was the answer since it seemed to be calculated to lead you on such a long and winding road that you forgot where you started.
After about an hour everyone just sort of gave up and after an hour of steady frowning the president looked a bit tired and retired back into his permanent campaign headquarters at the White House. Tomorrow' all of the press thought; that's when we'll see the brilliance of the Obama plan, that's when the Secretary of the Treasury will stun us into rapture with the beauty and elegant simplicity of the financial fix.
Didn't happen. How anyone could reasonably expect a person that repeatedly could not figure out how to even pay the taxes on his own salary was going to fix Wall Street problems- much of which had been exacerbated by him while working with Secretary Paulson- in retrospect seems a bit silly.
Wall Street, which has a habit of actually listening to economic packages realized that there was no there, there. No real plan, just further discussion of the Democrats version of how the crisis appears to have arisen while tiptoeing around the part played by Democrats like Chris Dodd who actually had the temerity to introduce the Secretary.
It's quite clear there is no leadership coming from this White House. There are demands, directions and a White House occupant that seems to fall into a snit every time someone questions practically anything. If its leadership were waiting for we're probably going to have to wait another four years.
If interested in reading it a good analysis of some of the facts versus fiction in the press conference that even the AP was willing to admit, click here.
