It can’t be easy to pull off a great interview with the Most Powerful Man in the Free World when given just seven minutes, as WFAA (Channel 8)’s Brad Watson got yesterday. It’s tough to tell, seeing only this edited version of the footage, whether President Obama was justified in getting testy with this mere-mortal local television reporter. But:
1) Watson should be proud that he didn’t just let the president’s comment that he lost Texas by only a few percentage points stand. He corrected Obama by saying that McCain had taken the state’s electoral votes by about 10 percent of the popular vote. (It was actually 12 percent.)
2) Watson may have gotten overexcited in essentially asking the president three times whether politics had anything to do with Houston being stiffed in the recent competition among museums to become the home of the retired space shuttles. I could understand at that point why Obama sounded a little snippy.
At the end, Obama is barely audible, telling Watson: “Let me finish my answers the next time we do an interview, all right?”
How excited must Watson have been to hear that? There’s going to be a next time!
