On Tuesday's CBS This Morning, Norah O'Donnell and Gayle King applauded colleague Nancy Cordes for her "great question"
to President Obama on Monday about a dishonest ad from a supporting
super PAC that blamed Mitt Romney for a woman's cancer death. However,
they failed to mention Cordes's earlier question [1] on how Obama's campaign has "suggested that Mr. Romney might be a felon for the way that he handed over power of Bain Capital."
The President falsely claimed that "nobody accused Mr. Romney of being a felon" in his answer to Cordes [2], an additional detail that went unnoticed by the CBS on-air personalities. Stephanie Cutter, Obama's deputy campaign manager, made the felony suggestion [3]
on July 12, 2012: "Either Mitt Romney, through his own words and his
own signature, was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony, or he was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the American people."
Fill-in anchor Jeff Glor noted the "rare news conference
we got from the President yesterday, where he got a lot of questions
about the tone of his campaign. He tried to distance himself from...the
super PAC ad that suggested the death of a steelworker's wife was
somehow because of Mitt Romney and what he did at Bain Capital." After
playing a clip of the Democrat's specific answer on the Priorities USA
ad, Glor turned to O'Donnell and asked, "Norah, he seems to skirt around
it just a little bit. Why not just announce it and say this should
never have been on the air?"
The soon-to-be CBS This Morning anchor, along with King, first
went out of their way to compliment Cordes, and then proceeded to
spotlight the consistent negative component of Obama's presidential
campaigns:
O'DONNELL: It's a very interesting part, and Nancy Cordes asked a great question to the President-
KING: Yes, she did-
O'DONNELL: Why not, sort of, denounce this and say it should never have
been on the air? I thought it was noteworthy the President knew that it
had only aired just once. That's how he knows the level of detail, even
though it's not his campaign that is running this ad.
Look, this is a question that Obama has to answer for, which is about
the tone of the campaign. Many people believed that Obama was about hope
and change in 2008. But it is true - he ran a very negative campaign in
2008 as well. There was a tough race. It was a tough race against
Hillary Clinton, and it was a tough race against John McCain. And they
are running another tough race again in 2012. So, you know, I think, as
the word has been used, it's not patty-cake in politics. It wasn't in
2008, and it's not in 2012.