Obama Talkfest

If nothing else, this President is setting records for communication as he visits the Middle East to say a few words privately and publicly in the Muslim world.

Before leaving, he tells Thomas Friedman of the New York Times that "if we are engaged in speaking directly to the Arab street, and they are persuaded that we are operating in a straightforward manner, then, at the margins, both they and their leadership are more inclined and able to work with us.”

His 20 minutes on the phone with Friedman and an interview with French TV yesterday, coming after dozens of other one-on-one media exchanges, have far outdone all previous presidents combined in giving access to the occupant of the White House.

Shortly before he died, JFK told me he had broken his rule against exclusive interviews only twice, for Izvestia with Soviet leader Khrushchev's son-in-law and a group of women's magazine editors about nuclear weapons.

Then there is the fabled Calvin Coolidge, the 1920s president known as "Silent Cal." At a White House dinner, when Dorothy Parker told him she had made a bet she could get him to say more than two words, Coolidge replied, "You lose."

In contrast, as President Obama's word count mounts, admirers will stress his openness while critics denounce him as all talk.

Be that as it may, Friedman tells him an old Jewish joke to start today's interview, and another comes to mind--about a voice from the balcony, after a famous Yiddish actor has dropped dead on the stage, keeps yelling "Give him an enema!"

Asked in exasperation how that could help a corpse. the heckler responds, "It couldn't hurt!"

Obama View From Barbara Walters

In the face of change, the timeless Barbara Walters scores another "get" with an exclusive interview with the Obamas, in which the new President talks about moral responsibility and the First Lady reveals that her daughters will be making their own beds in the White House.

Detroit automakers, Barack Obama tells her, are "a little tone deaf to what's happening in America right now...a problem for the captains of industry, generally. When people are pulling down hundred-million-dollar bonuses on Wall Street, and taking enormous risks with other people's money...they're not seeing what's going on out there, and one of the things I hope my presidency helps to usher in is a return to an ethic of responsibility."

In the interview, there are echoes of JFK's Inaugural Address ("Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country"):

"(T)here's got to be a point where you say, 'You know what, I have enough, and now I'm in this position of responsibility, let me make sure that I'm doing right by people, and, and acting in a way that is responsible.' And that's true, by the way, for members of Congress, that's true for the president, that's true for Cabinet members, that's true for parents. I want all of us to start thinking a little bit more, not just about what's good for me...but what's good for our children, what's good for our country. The more we do that, the better off we're going to be."

It's good to see Walters, in her eightieth year, still out-hustling the competition after more than half a century, starting with her first job doing publicity for Redbook when I was editor.

Later, when the president's daughter, Lynda Bird Johnson, went to work at McCalls, there were almost daily calls to get me to arrange an exclusive interview. Barbara didn't get that one, but there are few she has missed since then.

It's good to see that not everything changes.