GOP Leaders Gave Obama an Ideal Setting, and They Shouldn't Do It Again

Was McCain on to something? Politics Daily's own David Corn is leading an array of bloggers, activists, and commentators from across the ideological spectrum in a movement to institutionalize more Obama/GOP question time. I don't doubt the sincerity or credentials of the conservatives who have joined Corn, but this conservative believes that most Republicans would just as soon see an end to these events.

The Republican aides who organized the Q&A may have thought they were setting a trap for Obama. In my estimation, it's clear the president benefited most from the exchange. Sure, he dodged several questions -- and offered obvious spin to others -- but most Americans don't notice such pesky details. The president looked and sounded good, and that's what matters. Interestingly, none of that would have made a difference had the White House not craftily asked -- and the Republicans not naively acquiesced -- to allow the session to be nationally televised (It was previously scheduled to be "off-the-record" and not even open to the press.)

Why did Obama -- who recently has underperformed as an orator -- do well in Baltimore? A large part of it involved the setting and format. There are essentially two settings for questions and answers, and which one is used can guarantee success or failure.

The first option is what I would call a "courtroom" atmosphere. Typically, everyone is seated in a formal environment. The questioners have the power; they can interrupt, cajole, filibuster, or even force the respondent to be quiet. This is closer to an interrogation than an exchange of views. Conservatives may recall Lt. Col. Oliver North -- wearing his neatly pressed dress Marine uniform – prospering in such an environment during the Iran-Contra hearings, but this is rare. If you've ever seen tobacco industry executives testify before Congress, you know what I'm talking about.
Merely placing people in this setting can make them appear guilty until proven innocent. If Obama allowed himself to be queried in such a setting, he probably would have fared poorly. In Britain, the prime minister gets banged up pretty good during his question time.

The second setting, however, turns the person answering questions into an expert. He or she actually becomes the lecturer. Those seated are his students.

Sun Tzu said most battles are won before they are fought and that he who picks the terrain will win. But the GOP leadership is apparently not up on their Sun Tzu. Guess which setting the Republicans negotiated for their meeting? Obama was a professor, and this was his milieu. The entire experiment was almost destined to be a win for the president.

Aside from the setting, it's also worth mentioning that almost any president -- with the glamour and trappings that come with the high office -- will look comparably good when confronting a House member. Imagine putting Ronald Reagan beside a Democratic member of Congress in 1981, and you'll get the point. I'm not going to single out any GOP House member, but collectively they looked like the warm-up act and Obama like the rock-star.

So why would Republicans -- with everything seemingly going in their direction -- give Obama this forum? They had their reasons: As House conference chairman Mike Pence told Neil Cavuto on Fox Business News, "We'd grown weary of this 'party of no' fiction that the administration and Congress had been advancing."

Well, I understand that rationale, but the Republican leadership should keep in mind that the folks complaining about the "party of no" don't have the GOP's interests at heart.