The pressure was on now because the president had called on me. Someone handed me a microphone, millions were watching, and it's scary to think about changing topic in a split second because you might get flustered and screw up.
But it's fun to gamble and like any good quarterback (though I was never athletic enough to actually play the position), I decided to call an audible.
So I went hard on the AIG question, and took Wolf's advice and followed on a couple of colleagues who got pushback from the president when they asked about how his budget numbers do not seem to add up.
So I waited patiently and then decided to pounce with a sharp follow-up. From just a few feet away, I could see in his body language that the normally calm and cool president was perturbed.
But it's in moments like that we sometimes find out what's really on a president's mind. In this case, he's not happy about the scrutiny on AIG. So he did slap me down a bit.
Anderson Cooper said later half-jokingly that yours truly was "nursing his wounds."
Even more comical to me was the flood of e-mail I got from Democratic and Republican sources.
Invariably, my Democratic friends tweaked along the lines of "how'd you like the smackdown" because they were pleased the president pushed back.
So the exchange was a great political Rorschach: Each party saw their own talking points in the reflection of the back-and-forth.
What do I think? I've got no hard feelings toward the president and I assume he feels the same, but I can't worry about that. I was doing my job -- and he was doing his
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slap him down a bit
that was a kick directy in the nuts :142smilie
I doubt Obama will call on Henry again in this lifetime. Henry can retire now or maybe go to Afgahnistan as a war correspondant.
:scared
