The View – President Obama

Whoopi was wearing what looked like baggy judge robes today. Joy was wearing – you guessed it, black. Sherri was wearing a black and white checked outfit that reminded me of a tablecloth. Elisabeth looked lovely in white. Barbara Walters made a special visit to the show and looked wonderful in black and white.

President Obama was today’s special guest. As the 44th President he is the first sitting President to ever guest on a daytime talk show.

Obama said that when he took office the country was losing 750k jobs per month and economy shrinking. He said that the economy is stabilizing and starting to grow again. Joy asked why the White House staff wasn’t being more aggressive in letting the country know how many things the President has accomplished. You know that saying  – there’s truth in humor? I believe it. His answer to her question – “Joy, that’s your job.” I have no doubt one of the biggest reasons that Obama went on The View is to attempt to deliver his message as a form of damage control, an answer to some of the negative things some people are saying and thinking.

Obama feels that if people treat each other with fairness and stand in someone else’s shoes and see through their eyes and relate to where they’re coming from we’ll make more progress. Whoopi asked Obama “who are we”, which I took to be a question about them as two African Americans. Obama said that if someone looks or sounds different people are cautious and people need to fight against that. Barbara asked Obama why he doesn’t describe himself as biracial, as his mother was white. His answer was that if the world saw him as African American he needed to embrace that. He said that he’s less interested in how we label ourselves than in how we treat each other. I found these statements particularly interesting, knowing that Obama himself has made at least one inappropriate statement that I took very personally. (Click here if you want to read my post about that.)

Remember those statistics at the beginning of this post? Elisabeth questioned how Obama could boast that jobs had been saved when the country has an all time high rate of unemployment. Obama answered that jobs had risen for the past five months and had the government not taken the steps it took we would be in a great depression. I didn’t see this as an answer to her question but rather one of those wishy-washy non-answer answers that some people give in the hopes that the audience will think the question has been answered.

Congress voted to spend another $59 billion on the war in Afghanistan. Barbara asked about the recent vote on funding for Afghanistan, in which she said 100 Democrats refused to vote on the funding presented. Obama never addressed that and instead said that we’re ending the war and leaving Iraq within the next month, and that we have a lot more work to do in Afghanistan and the target date for more transition there is July 2011.

The best part of the show was when Joy asked some quick questions. Check it out.

To summarize the rapid fire round.
He said that he did know Lindsay Lohan was in jail.
When asked if Snooki should run for mayor he said he didn’t know who Snooki was.
I laughed so hard when Joy asked if Mel Gibson needed anger management and Obama said he’d rather answer the Afghanistan question.
There is an official presidents tweet but someone else tweets for him.
He has a Blackberry but said noone will share any of “the juicy stuff” because they’re afraid.
He has an iPod. There’s all sorts of music on it but no Justin Beiber.
He was not invited to Chelsea Clinton’s wedding, which he said was proper because the wedding should be about the couple and not other people.

For more information about The View go to theview.abc.go.com.

I was given financial compensation from ABC Daytime to write this blog. My reviews and recommendations are always my own and represent my genuinely held opinions.

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Category: Reviews