President Obama on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCrE8e-9wto

Last night, President Barack Obama gave an impressive interview to Jay Leno on the Tonight Show. Obama was perhaps as confident and comfortable as he’s ever appeared as President. Why does this matter? Because, in politics, optics matter. Style as well as substance matters. The Tonight Show still gets strong ratings, and viewership across the country soars when President Obama sits down with Jay Leno. So let’s check out what Obama said and how he said it:

In Part 1 (see above), President Obama is immediately at ease joking about how he and his friends were “a bunch of old guys” playing golf and basketball on his birthday, and his secret to staying married to wife Michelle for 21 years thus far. Leno then asks about the current embassy closings and security threats in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East. Obama is calm and reassuring, and garners applause as he explains the threats in general terms and the precautionary steps the U.S. is taking. When Leno asks, “What do you say to those cynics who go, ‘Oh, this is an overreaction to Benghazi’?” Obama answers, “One thing I’ve tried to to as President is not overreact.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc6AR3daQNA

In Part 2 above, Leno asks Obama about the NSA intelligence program. Obama says, “We should have healthy skepticism about what government is doing.” Then Obama delivers the line that has caused some controversy afterward: “There is no spying on Americans….We don’t have a domestic spying program.” However, Obama goes on to elaborate that, while NSA is gathering data on phone numbers and email addresses used to contact suspected terrorists, “nobody is listening to your phone call.” It’s an important distinction that no doubt will be lost among many of President Obama’s political opponents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0L6O4BK6jCw

In Part 3 above, Leno asks President Obama about Russia‘s granting of temporary asylum to NSA leaker Edward Snowden, and its effect on U.S.-Russia relations (today the White House announced that President Obama is canceling his planned one-on-one September meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in part because of Russia’s action on Snowden). Obama replies that “there have been times where they slip back into Cold War thinking and a Cold War mentality, and what I consistently say to them and what I say to President Putin is, ‘that’s the past, and we’ve got to think about the future, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to cooperate more effectively than we do.'”

When Leno asked President Obama about Russia’s new anti-gay laws. Obama stated unequivocally that, “When it comes to universal rights, when it comes to people’s basic freedoms, whether you are discriminating on the basis of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, you are violating the basic morality that I think transcends every country….One of the things that I think is very important for me to speak out on is making sure that people are treated fairly and justly, because that’s what we stand for, and I believe that’s a precept that’s not unique to America, that’s something that should apply everywhere.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DGk-NRd0F4

In Part 4 above, when Jay Leno asks whether Russia’s anti-gay law should affect U.S. involvement in the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Russian city of Sochi, Obama receives a round of applause when he says that “Putin and Russia … understand that, for most of the countries that participate in the Olympics, we wouldn’t tolerate gays and lesbians being treated differently….They are athletes, they are there to compete, and if Russia wants to uphold the Olympic spirit, then every judgment should be made on the track or in the swimming pool or on the balance beam, and people’s sexual orientation shouldn’t have anything to do with it.”

Asked about the economy, President Obama deftly attacked Republicans in Congress without attacking them personally. When Leno asked why infrastructure  is now a partisan issue, Obama explained that “this is something that has been bipartisan, I mean, it used to be, Republicans and Democrats, they love cutting those ribbons, and we’ve got a bunch of construction workers who aren’t working right now, they’ve got the skills, they want to get on the job, it would have a huge impact on the economy not just now but well into the future. So I’m just going to keep on pushing Republicans to join with us, and let’s try to do it….We don’t need a huge government, but we need government doing some basic things.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMCfxWN_X3Q

In Part 5 above, Leno continues about infrastructure, asking whether the U.S. could have another Works Progress Administration (WPA) like we had under President Theodore Roosevelt, to “fix up Detroit” and tackle other large projects. Obama responds that the WPA projects and similar public projects like Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge result in tremendous economic benefits even today. Obama cited the Interstate Highway System, passed by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, noting, “Think of all the businesses that got created because we put that together.”

Asked about U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona, Obama praised McCain as “a person of integrity” who worked with Democrats to pass an immigration reform bill in the Senate. He deserves credit for being somebody who is willing to go against the grain of his own party sometimes…. He’s an example of a number of Republicans in the Senate, in the House, who want to be for something, not just be against everything.” The big applause Obama received there should serve as a warning to many Congressional Republicans, that voters do not like their “oppose everything, do nothing” strategy.

Likewise, President Obama again received applause when speaking about elements of the Affordable Care Act a/k/a “Obamacare,” such as the requirement that insurance companies spend at least 80 percent of their revenue from premiums on provided coverage, and free preventive and contraceptive care for women and families.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DrIQiPYwy4

In Part 6 above, Leno asks Obama about the Trayvon Martin case. Obama was careful with his words as always, but got a bit personal in explaining why this is a sensitive topic for African Americans.

From the very beginning of his Tonight Show interview, President Obama appeared to be not just the Commander in Chief of the U.S. military, but the commander of the airwaves as well.