THE SUPERBOWL DEBATE

Barack Obama

  Cartoon View START: A moving target Opinion Brief Email Bill O’Reilly vs. Obama: Who won?

The president sat down with the Fox News star for a head-to-head before yesterday’s Super Bowl. Did either man end up looking like a “pinhead”?

posted on February 7, 2011, at 11:04 AM

In a pre-game interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, President Obama joked that the worst part of being president was working on Super Bowl Sunday. Photo: Fox SEE ALL 42 PHOTOS

Best Opinion:  Amer. Spectator, Fox News, National Journal

President Obama gave a 15-minute live interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly on Super Bowl Sunday, in a conversation that ranged from Egypt to health care to football. It was Obama’s first sit-down with frequent critic O’Reilly since September 2008, two months before Obama was elected president. In the high-stakes interview prior to the big game, who came out on top: Obama or O’Reilly? (Watch a clip from the interview below)

Obama won this round: “The president spun O’Reilly’s questions like Ben Roethlisberger spirals a football,” says Aaron Goldstein in The American Spectator. The president stayed on message, and O’Reilly only challenged him once, pressing him to forecast a Super Bowl winner. This sit-down would more properly have taken place “before a softball game,” not the Super Bowl, since O’Reilly mostly “asked softball questions.” Clearly, “Obama got what he wanted out of this interview.”
“Thoughts on Obama-O’Reilly interview”

Obama flopped: The president still hasn’t learned any lessons from his midterm drubbing, and this interview proved it, says Christian Whiton in Fox News. Obama’s answers were all “either delusional or disingenuous,” and his repeated “well-trod talking points” showed that he’s learned nothing from his November shellacking.
“O’Reilly Obama interview shows that president still hasn’t changed course”

Call it a draw: “Both sides scored,” says Beth Reinhard in National Journal. O’Reilly “repeatedly interrupted” and even “talked over” Obama, without the conversation turning confrontational, and Fox got an exclusive interview with the president before a “Super Bowl–sized audience.” Obama, for his part, was funny and “looked unafraid to face a news network he once described as ‘entirely devoted to attacking my administration.'”
“Obama and O’Reilly spar”