Yes, President Obama Is Going to Watch the Debate

The White House wants you to know that Pres­id­ent Obama is not watch­ing every step taken by those who want his job.

“He feels like he’s got bet­ter things to do,” ex­plained press sec­ret­ary Josh Earn­est when asked why the pres­id­ent didn’t watch the early GOP can­did­ate de­bates. While Earn­est on Tues­day grudgingly ac­know­ledged that Obama might watch “parts” of the first Demo­crat­ic de­bate, he said the com­pet­i­tion from “some pretty good play­off base­ball” is just too much to keep the pres­id­ent riv­eted on the de­bate stage.

Don’t be­lieve it. In­cum­bent dis­in­terest in polit­ics is one of those fibs every White House tells, right up there with the as­ser­tions that the pres­id­ent doesn’t fol­low his own poll num­bers and doesn’t really think about his leg­acy.

The truth is that this pres­id­ent—like all pres­id­ents—is a politi­cian and a com­pet­it­or. He is in­tensely proud of his re­cord in of­fice, doesn’t deny that he’d be temp­ted to stick around longer if not barred by the Con­sti­tu­tion, and is peeved by the cri­ti­cism be­ing tossed around by the Re­pub­lic­an wan­nabes. That much was clear from his week­end fun­drais­ing trip to the West Coast and his in­ter­view aired Sunday on 60 Minutes.

He knows that he can’t count on the Demo­crat­ic can­did­ates to de­fend his re­cord. He un­der­stands they can’t be seen as run­ning for his third term. So he has star­ted us­ing his speeches and in­ter­views to mount his own de­fense and at­tack the Re­pub­lic­ans who cast him as a fail­ure. On Fri­day and Sat­urday, in four speeches in Seattle, San Fran­cisco, and Los Angeles, he let Re­pub­lic­ans have it as grumpy, de­press­ing, pess­im­ist­ic, short-sighted can­did­ates who want to take the county back­wards.

“What we see most prom­in­ently in the pres­id­en­tial cam­paigns … is that polit­ics of fear be­ing fanned and ex­pand­ing,” he said in Los Angeles. “And it can ex­press it­self in anti-im­mig­ra­tion rhet­or­ic. It can ex­press it­self in hunk­er­ing back on the need to take care of folks who are vul­ner­able, or to provide more op­por­tun­ity for people who’ve been locked out of the Amer­ic­an Dream. It can ex­press it­self in sort of cheap jin­go­ism and mil­it­ar­ism and na­tion­al­ism that’s not groun­ded in our na­tion­al se­cur­ity in­terests. But it’s a dan­ger­ous path.”

In Seattle, he drew laughter when he mocked the Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ates. “Why are all these Re­pub­lic­an politi­cians so down on Amer­ica? I mean, I know it’s polit­ic­al sea­son, but listen­ing to them is really de­press­ing.”

He ad­ded, “It kind of doesn’t match up with the truth. In the real­ity they cre­ate, everything was ter­rif­ic in 2008—in the middle of the worst re­ces­sion in our life­times. Un­em­ploy­ment, un­in­sured rates go­ing up; we were in two wars, hope­lessly ad­dicted to for­eign oil, bin Laden still at large. To hear them tell it, those were the good old days.” He ac­cused the can­did­ates of “spend­ing all their time try­ing to scare people and try­ing to tap in­to fear, par­tic­u­larly fear of oth­er people.”

In San Fran­cisco, he urged people to “listen to them a little bit just to hear what they’re say­ing.” He cred­ited them with great “chutzpah” for their at­tacks on him, adding, “The fact-check­ers can’t even keep up.”

His cri­ti­cism is more spe­cif­ic when it comes to na­tion­al se­cur­ity policies es­poused by the Re­pub­lic­an con­tenders. In little-no­ticed re­marks dur­ing a White House meet­ing closed to the press on Sept. 10, the pres­id­ent said if he took the ad­vice of Re­pub­lic­ans “we’d be in, like, sev­en wars right now.” The re­marks to a small group of vet­er­ans and Gold Star moth­ers of Amer­ic­an troops killed over­seas were un­covered by Olivi­er Knox of Ya­hoo News, who found a video of the pres­id­ent’s present­a­tion. In the video, Obama said, “I’m not ex­ag­ger­at­ing. I’ve been count­ing. We’d be in mil­it­ary ac­tions in sev­en places around the world.” The pres­id­ent did not spe­cify the sev­en places. The vari­ous Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ates have at dif­fer­ent points called for a stronger U.S. mil­it­ary re­sponse in Ir­an, Ir­aq, Afgh­anistan, Ukraine, Syr­ia, Ye­men, and the South China Sea.

In his 60 Minutes in­ter­view, the pres­id­ent re­buffed ef­forts to han­di­cap Don­ald Trump’s cam­paign bey­ond call­ing him “a great pub­li­city seeker” who he doesn’t think will ever be pres­id­ent. Bey­ond that, Obama de­murred, stat­ing, “I’ll leave it up to the pun­dits.”

He also danced a little bit around re­port­er Steve Kroft’s ques­tion on his feel­ings about be­ing barred from run­ning for an­oth­er term. “I think it’s bit­ter­sweet,” he said. “On the one hand, I am very proud of what we’ve ac­com­plished and it makes me think, I’d love to do some more. But by the time I’m fin­ished, I think it will be time for me to go.”