Play all audios:
President Obama didn’t generate a “single blockbuster story” in his “unprecedented” Sunday morning TV blitz, said Lynn Sweet in Politics Daily, but “he made plenty of headlines.” Appearing
on NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and Univision—but not Fox—Obama said he was undecided on sending more troops to Afghanistan, downplayed racism as a motive for his critics but scolded TV news for
rewarding “rude” behavior, and talked a lot about health care reform. The five interviews in Obama’s “talk show grand slam” were so “eerily similar,” said Alessandra Stanley in _The New York
Times_, they looked more like “a string of TNT reruns” than Sunday morning’s usual “drama of live politics.” His decision to snub Fox News did “raise a distracting fuss”—and “Fox milked it”
for all its worth—but otherwise the most “striking” thing was the “lack of spontaneity.” Repetitive or not, “the full market blitz by the White House was a crafty move,” said Michael
Scherer in _Time_. It made “the very fact” of Obama doing so many news shows a news story in itself, boosting the volume of his message. The focus on health care also provided a helpful
“domestic anchor” to a week full of foreign policy. SUBSCRIBE TO THE WEEK Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives. SUBSCRIBE &
SAVE SIGN UP FOR THE WEEK'S FREE NEWSLETTERS From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox. From our morning
news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox. He still has one more stop in his “TV blitz”—David Letterman on Monday, said
Howard Kurtz in _The Washington Post_. But Obama’s media marathon isn’t so crafty if it’s “wearing out his welcome on the tube.” Even as he criticized the 24-hour news cycle, it’s clear that
Obama is now an “eager player” in it. If he isn’t careful, he’ll end up as “just another programming element.” (watch Peggy Noonan criticize Obama’s TV blitz) A free daily email with the
biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com