Obama’s Town Hall Questioners Were Backers
By Wyatt Earp | March 29, 2009
Shocka!
President Obama has promised to change the way the government does business, but in at least one respect he is taking a page from the Bush playbook, stocking his town hall Thursday with supporters whose soft — though far from planted — questions provided openings to discuss his preferred message of the day.
This must be part of that “change we can believe in.”
Obama has said, “I think it’s important to engage your critics … because not only will you occasionally change their mind but, more importantly, sometimes they will change your mind,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs recounted to The Post’s Lois Romano in an interview Wednesday.
But while the online question portion of the White House town hall was open to any member of the public with an Internet connection, the five fully identified questioners called on randomly by the president in the East Room were anything but a diverse lot. They included: a member of the pro-Obama Service Employees International Union, a member of the Democratic National Committee who campaigned for Obama among Hispanics during the primary; a former Democratic candidate for Virginia state delegate who endorsed Obama last fall in an op-ed in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star; and a Virginia businessman who was a donor to Obama’s campaign in 2008. (H/T - The Washington Post)
Well, that must have simply been a coincidence. I mean, what are the odds that the president would call upon backers and supporters during a free-wheeling, completely open Town Hall discussion? Cough . . . Cough . . . Spit!
Sorry, I was choking on my own snarkasm there for a second.
March 29th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Change we can believe in, right? Sure! Chicago’s kind of change, that is.
March 29th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Quite frankly, I’m impressed.
I’da figured they wouldn’t be supporters, but White House staffers at the lowest, if it wasn’t Biden.
March 30th, 2009 at 12:57 am
“a page from the Bush playbook.”
Apparently this is a falsehood. You should not take my word for it, you should confirm it yourself, but my understanding is that there is not a comparable instance of Bush using fake ‘random, nonpartisan’ questioners. When they were partisan, it was obvious partisans at a partisan event.
March 30th, 2009 at 1:51 am
I have a name for him, but I can’t repeat it.
March 30th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Given an audience of equal pro and con distribution, say 50 - 50 the odds of 5 “pro” supporters being picked is roughly : one to 2 to the 5th or 32 to one. Now this is with replacement. Without replacement of theose chosen it would actually be a little higher but not much more depending on the size of the population. To get the true odds without replacment back into the general pool of “pickees” then use Bayes Theorem. Hope this cleared things up. Cough cough.
March 30th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Morgan - It’s just so phony. I’d have more respect for him if he said, “I’m going to take questions from my supporters.”
Petey - Oh, we’d know if it was Biden. All of the questions would be misspelled.
Wm T Sherman - Consider the source. The Post had to throw a little Bush snark in there when they criticized their rock star.
Linda - Let’s just call it shenanigans.
Jon - Why is there blood coming out of my ears now?
March 30th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
I should have issued a ..Get duct tape warning first..
LOL