Charles Gibson, who steps down Friday as anchor of "ABC's World News," is scheduled to interview President Barack Obama today. The interview is set to air as part of tonight's newscast, which will be anchored from the White House.
"As Gibson prepares to depart the 'World News' anchor chair on Friday, he will sit down with the President to discuss a wide range of issues, including Afghanistan, the economy and the President's reflections on his first year in office," the network's press release says.
If those topics sounds familiar, it's probably because Oprah Winfrey interviewed the president on the very same matters in a prime-time special that aired Sunday on ABC. Remember how his "reflections on his first year in office" led the president to give himself a grade of B-plus, which he said he would raise to an A-minus if he got health care through Congress by the end of the year. It's good to be the person giving the grade, isn't it?
I wouldn't be complaining about Obama and his latest TV blitz again if he hadn't used the medium so shamelessly Sunday. Read my comments here. And today, we get more evidence of just how shameless is shameless when it comes to this president and the use of TV for political theater.
Remember in the president's interview with Steve Kroft on "60 Minutes" Sunday how he called the Wall Street bankers "fat cats" and said he was going to get tough with them if they didn't shape up? You should, it made headlines everywhere Monday -- just as if he had actually said something of substance.
I say that because now comes a story from the "Washington Post" that says last Friday Obama's Treasury Department gave Citibank a $38 billion tax break -- that's $38 billion that won't be going into the peoples' treasury. That giveaway would have been okayed right around the time of the "60 Minutes" taping.
It is one thing to play a president who talks tough to the big banks when he's on TV. It's another to be one behind closed doors when you are doing real business with the bankers.
Campbell Brown had CNN's Ali Velshi and CNBC's Charles Gasparino on her CNN show Monday night. They analyzed the president's White House "summit" with the big bankers as well as his "60 Minutes' interview. The summit wasn't much of a summit after the biggest bankers failed to show claiming they were fogged in at various airports Monday morning. They did connect via teleconferencing, which was a nice way for the bankers not to let themselves be used as props and bit players for our TV Performer in Chief's political theater.
Gasparino called the summit and the "60 Minutes" interview all part of a White House "show," and good for him for speaking the simple truth. And presumably he didn't yet know about the $38 billion tax break to Citibank revealed in today's "Post."
Still, I'll be watching "World News" tonight. I wouldn't miss seeing what role President Obama will be playing for the TV cameras today -- and what he says when Gibson asks him how the tax break for Citibank squares with his empty anti-fat-cat rhetoric.
I know Gibson will ask the tough questions just as he did with Sarah Palin last fall, won't he?
