President Obama's press conference earlier today took an unexpected twist when Major Elliott Garrett -- Chief White House correspondent for CBS News -- broke from the fold of softball questioning typically associated with these press conferences and aggressively pressed the President for his blatant dishonesty over Obamacare's rollout.
You said, while the law was being debated, 'if you like your plan, you can keep it.' You said, after the law was implemented or signed, 'if you like your plan, you can keep it.' Americans believed you, sir, when you said that to them over and over.
President Obama:
Right...
Major Garrett:
Do you not believe Americans deserve a deeper, more transparent accountability from you as to why you said that over and over when your own statistics in the Federal Register alerted your policy staff, and I presume you, that millions of Americans would fall into the gap you're trying to administratively fix now?
The question shifted from aggressive to uncomfortable as Major Garrett cut Obama's attempts to respond by segueing into a second question, thus forcing the President into a nervous cringe.
That's one question! Second question: You were informed, or several people in this building were informed, two weeks before the launch of the website that it was failing the most basic tests internally, and yet a decision was made to launch the website on October 1st. Did you, sir, make that decision, and if so, do you regret that?
The tough questioning worked, because Obama admitted his all too clear detachment from his signature law's implementation.
I was not informed directly the website would not be working the way it was supposed to. Had I been informed, I wouldn't go out and say, 'this is going to be great.' I'm accused of a lot of things, but I don't think I'm stupid enough to go around saying 'this is going to be like shopping on Amazon or Travelocity' a week before the website opens if I thought it wasn't going to work. So clearly we, and i, did not have enough awareness about the problems in the website.
If only the media actually did this for every press conference...
