Augusta Chronicle Editorial Staff
Most of us will never, ever get a shot at asking a sitting president a question, especially on national television. Not even those of us privileged enough to be a part of the working press.
So how maddening is it that, with everything going on and going wrong in the world, and the president taking only a limited amount of questions, The New York Times is asking President Obama at his press conference, gee, what enchants you about being president?
Funny, but the White House press corps never seemed to ask such vapid questions of our other presidents. Love does strange things to people.
You can't help but like Mr. Obama as a person. He's charming, funny and down to Earth. But let's not go overboard. Washington Post columnist Tom Shales went overboard so hard he nearly sank the ship when he wrote this past week that "Obama can use a five-dollar word such as 'overarching' in one sentence and a few sentences later utter a folksy 'doggone it.' His verbiage is a melting pot that's always bubbling."
Wow.
Maybe we're more than a little disenchanted with the national media's fawning, but we wish there'd been some more serious journalists at the press conference last week.
We wish, for instance, one of them had asked:
"Mr. President, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says the country lost 168,000 manufacturing jobs in February alone, and 257,000 in January. Manufacturing employment is now at its lowest level since before World War II. In the last 10 years, we've lost 28 percent of our manufacturing jobs - 4.9 million of them.
"Moreover, the U.S. trade deficit - the difference between what we sell as a country and what we buy from other countries - is already nearly $216 billion for the first four months of this year alone. That's a giant sucking sound of money and jobs leaving shore.
"Meanwhile, most of the countries we trade with hit our imports with a 'value-added tax' at the border - while they rebate the same tax on the things that their own companies sell to us. It's an uneven playing field.
"Mr. President, can America remain a great nation, in your view, if it is losing its ability to make things? And what will you do to stop the erosion of manufacturing jobs and the unfair trading practices we're dealing with?"
Admittedly, that's a bit more involved than, "What has enchanted you about being president?"
But it's somewhat more important, wouldn't you think?
