They should have brought in Colbert

Last night President Obama appeared on The Daily Show where Jon Stewart asked him some fairly easy questions mostly about politics instead of policy. Even so, Obama didn't seem up to it. The President was at turns annoyed, condescending and even stupid in dealing with the largely deferential Stewart. The "Heckuva job, Larry Summers" blunder was particularly telling and not at all the "intended pun" Obama tried to pass it off as. When the conversation turned to the financial crisis, Obama mostly just ran out the clock by talking long enough to keep Stewart from getting any tough questions regarding the issue he knows the most about.

Earlier in the day, the President met with five well-known progressive bloggers who asked more specific questions and received more thoughtful, if decidedly wormier, answers.

Q Mine is an easy question. Will you rule out raising the retirement age to 70?

THE PRESIDENT: We are awaiting a report from the deficit commission, or deficit reduction commission, so I have been adamant about not prejudging their work until we get it.

But I think you can look at the statements that I’ve made in the past, including when I was campaigning for the presidency, that Social Security is something that can be fixed with some modest modifications that don’t impose hardships on beneficiaries who are counting on it.

And so the example that I used during the campaign was an increase in the payroll tax, not an increase — let me scratch that. Not an increase in the payroll tax but an increase in the income level at which it is excluded.

And so what I’ve been clear about is, is that I’ve got a set of preferences, but I want the commission to go ahead and do its work. When it issues its report, I’m not automatically going to assume that it’s the right way to do things. I’ll study it and examine it and see what makes sense.

But I’ve said in the past, I’ll say here now, it doesn’t strike me that a steep hike in the retirement age is in fact the best way to fix Social Security.

In other words, no, the President will not rule out raising the retirement age to 70. The "I'll study it" dodge is particularly grating to anyone who has watched Rep Joseph Cao pretend to care about issues important to his constituents before voting against them for two years. It what a politician says when he can't say, "I don't really give a shit about you"

Also, I can't help but notice the conspicuous absence of any questions about the war during either of these sessions. Was that a condition of the President's participation?