You’re the elite, the cream of the
national press corps (That’s pronounced “core” rather than “corpse,”
which the president botched recently, but which you all found far less
important than the “e” that’s not at the end of potato when a Republican
VP stumbled). Thanks for coming. I invited you here to ask when’s the
last time any of you fearless pros asked the president as direct and
challenging a question as these two hardballs he faced last week at
Univision, the Spanish language network:
"I think up to 100 Mexicans might have
died (in Operation Fast and Furious) and also American agent Brian
Terry. There's a report that 14 agents were responsible for the
operation, but shouldn't the attorney general, Eric Holder…have known
about that and if he didn't, should you fire him?"
"You promised [immigration reform] and a promise is a promise. And with all due respect, you didn't keep that promise."
Those are some respectful zingers doing
just what the press is supposed to: holding political leaders
accountable for their words and actions. So, can you think of any tough
question you’ve put to him lately?
As in, sometime this term?
You don’t really want to look like lap dog sycophants, do you? Good. Then here are a few suggestions:
Ask him if his policies toward the Middle East may have contributed to current violence there.
Specifically, did his decision to
pressure Mubarak out of Egypt and to forcibly remove Qaddafi from Libya
enable radical elements hostile to the US to rise to power?
Ask him if his overall approach to engaging the Muslim world has produced positive results.
Ask him why, after the attacks on
Egyptian, Libyan, and other embassies, his administration immediately
asserted the fiction they were spontaneous demonstrations of religious
grievance at an obscure internet clip critical of Mohammed.
Ask why for over a week it denied there
was a deliberate targeting of America by terrorist groups on the
anniversary of September 11th. Ask him if it’s true the
State Department had warnings of likely attacks in the Middle East at
least 48 hours before they occurred.
Ask him, with or without warnings, why
are American embassies in some of the most dangerous places on earth
essentially unguarded? Will secretary of State Clinton be held
accountable for this failure to protect American personnel?
Speaking of Obama team players, will any
of you professional skeptics ask Harry Reid if he plans to apologize to
Mitt Romney for falsely accusing him of paying no taxes for 10 years?
And if he doesn’t, then why not?
Will any of you ask the president how he
can serve all Americans, as he pointedly told David Letterman is his
job, if he doesn’t even know what the national debt is or what he has
added to it?
When the president declares he “saved the
auto industry,” will you ask him if he thinks Ford Motor Company and
the American plants of Toyota, Honda, and Nissan aren’t also part of the
American auto industry?
Ask him—if Chrysler and GM couldn’t pay
their bills--what he thinks would have happened if bankruptcy law had
been allowed to operate in a normal way? Would Americans’ demand for
cars have been less?
Wouldn’t Chrysler’s and GM’s assets have been sold
in an orderly way to leaner competitors or start up companies, who would
have created new jobs and joined other suppliers to serve the American
market?
Will you ask if it isn’t it more accurate
to say he saved the ruinous pay, benefits, and pensions of the United
Auto Workers that GM and Chrysler employed, and did it by lawlessly
ripping equity out of the hands of secured creditors and bondholders and
gifting it to the labor unions?
And, isn’t it true that the happy talk a
while back about GM paying back its loans was highly misleading, as in
essentially false? That wasn’t income from auto sales, was it, just
federal stimulus grants that GM turned around and handed back to the
government? And don’t taxpayers still hold a major chunk of GM ownership
in billions of devalued stock? And isn’t the company’s survival still
very much in doubt?
Will you ask him if this is really a
success story, or likely a terribly costly, vote-buying boondoggle that
just hasn’t played out yet?
Those are just a few starters. If you all
think about it, there are a lot of fastballs you could throw over the
left edge of the plate—if your peripheral vision reaches there.