Obama Among The Republicans

Everyone will see what they want to see in President Obama’s Q&A; with the House Republican conference today-Democrats will be emboldened by the President’s sometimes aggressive tone, Republicans will praise the sharp questions from their members, C-SPAN will be thrilled that people are paying attention to C-SPAN, etc.-but I think this was the part I enjoyed most.

“I mean, we’ve got to be careful about what we say about each other sometimes because it boxes us in in ways that makes it difficult for us to work together because our constituents start believing us. They don’t know sometimes this is just politics, what you guys, you know, or folks on my side do sometimes. So just a tone of civility instead of slash-and-burn would be helpful.

The problem we have sometimes is a media that responds only to slash- and-burn-style politics. You don’t get a lot of credit if I say, ‘You know, I think Paul Ryan’s a pretty sincere guy and has a beautiful family.’ Nobody’s going to run that in the newspapers, right?

(LAUGHTER)

And by the way, in case he’s going to get a Republican challenge, I didn’t mean it.

(LAUGHTER)

I don’t want to — don’t want to hurt you, man.

(LAUGHTER)”

I don’t know, it made me smile, at least. (I also liked the part where he kept calling Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) “Jim.”) Anyway, if you’d like to watch the whole thing, C-SPAN has it. There’s also a transcript here.