President Barack Obama has given an interview with the AP in which he sharpens his attack on presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Among other things, he argues that Romney won’t “own up” to some responsibilities such as releasing his tax returns, wants to pursue policies that failed in the past, now holds “extreme views” and would be bad news for the middle class. What is a bit unusual here is it coming so close to Romney’s political coronation in Tampa early next week. It suggests not just the campaign moving into a tougher, hand-to-hand combat phase but Obama inoculating himself against a week of media coverage that will be dominated by GOPer attacks on him and his administration.
GO HERE to watch the segment and read more.
TECHNICAL NOTE: I tried to embed several of the AP segments but their site is the only one I’ve seen where a)you can’t center the embed on the page no matter how you try b)the video comes up playing without being clicked on. The original version of this post had a h/T to The Huffington Post, but I’ve removed it and removed the AP embeds totally so readers can to go the HufPo and see the key segment without being driven batty by three embeds coming up with three Obamas talking at the same time. (It would not be unusual to hear two Romneys talking at the same time.)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.