Barack Obama got cranky with a reporter today when asked a question at a diner about Jimmy Carter meeting with Hamas.
As Sen. Hillary Clinton was preparing to campaign here today, Sen. Barack Obama was meeting with voters at a diner and apparently pretty hungry. "Why can't I just eat my waffle?" he said, when asked a foreign policy question by a reporter at the Glider Diner.
What's the big deal? Why is this news? Because, as Jay Newton-Small at Time's Swampland explains, Obama hasn't given a press conference in 10 days and the reporters had no other opportunity to ask him.
Journalists in general don’t relish asking politicians questions in awkward situations, like on a golf course or over a waffle. But sometimes our hands are forced: Obama hasn’t given a press conference in 10 days and the questions, some of them -- like Hamas -- rather important, are starting to build up. If he wins the nomination he'll be running again John McCain, whose philosophy is to give the press total access to the point of saturation; Obama might consider holding avails with a little more regularity. Then, maybe, reporters would let him to eat in peace.
Like Kevin Drum says, this is baffling.
Obama just doesn't give the press much access, sometimes shutting them down for weeks at a time. Why? Does this make sense to anyone else as a campaign strategy? I'm baffled by it.
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/4/22/0143/90714
