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Obama to do "O'Reilly Factor" on Thursday
The New Republic has a report that Sen. Barack Obama is going to go on Fox News' "O'Reilly Factor" Thursday night.
This would be a very, very big deal, especially given Obama's near-total blackout of Fox News since he announced his candidacy.
It's no coincidence, of course, that Sen. John McCain is scheduled to deliver the biggest speech of his campaign that same night, as he accepts the Republican Presidential nomination.
Fox is likely to have off-the-charts ratings for the interview, and Obama gets to take on the MSM's biggest conservative mouthpiece one-on-one. A good perfornamce against the Bully-in-Chief, and Obama will have succeeded in stealing the news cycle with positive coverage.
The TNR report does say that they expect Obama to get the same sort of soft-toss interview that Hillary Clinton got when she spoke to O'Reilly during the Democratic primary. However, I would not expect Obama to get anything other than O'Reilly's flame-throwing "journalism" de rigeur. Fortunately, the Illinois senator has handled all sorts of hostile questioning this primary season, and he'll certainly be prepared for more of the same from Fox's lead bloviator.
Comments (3)
O'Reilly will be much tougher on Obama than he was on Clinton. He was quite upfront at the time about the fact that he was much softer on her because she was a woman - said he couldn't be seen to be beating up on one.
One question is utterly predictable. He'll bring up Dick Morris's claim that Obama is misleading about his healthcare policy: Obama says he won't cover illegals but the 47m figure he uses means he is including them.
September 3, 2008 1:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think this is great. I'm pretty confident Obama can handle Billo. And not only will it compete somewhat with McCain's speech (including next day), but it will reach much of the same audience and hopefully remind at least a few of the more reasonable folks that he's not the demonic stereotype the Republicans will have tried to paint him as.
September 3, 2008 1:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
As he said he is willing to have direct dialogue with our enemies and let them know where we stand. This is a good demonstration of his 'steel' and wisdom.
September 3, 2008 2:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
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