Bob Schieffer Laughs Out Loud After Playing Video of Obama Bragging About His Accomplishments

May 27th, 2012 5:16 PM

CBS's Bob Schieffer certainly wasn't in an Obama-loving mood Sunday.

Having asked the President's senior campaign adviser "Whatever happened to hope and change" early in the program, the Face the Nation host in a subsequent segment laughed out loud after playing a clip of Obama bragging about his accomplishments on 60 Minutes last year (video follows with transcript and commentary):


BOB SCHIEFFER, HOST: I want to play a little something for you. I think one of the lessons that probably all of us recognize is that if you-- I've wrote a book once about Ronald Reagan it came out the month that he was-- that George Bush was inaugurated. The book, I-- I think, everything in the book is accurate, but it is not entirely true, because we didn't know at that time that the Soviet Union was going to fall in. I don't give credit-- Reagan credit, total credit for that but certainly his policies had a part in it. I think you really run a risk when you start trying to judge a presidency--

MICHAEL DUFFY, TIME MAGAZINE: Too soon.

BOB SCHIEFFER: --too soon. I want to run this. This is what Barack Obama last December told Steve Kroft of 60 MINUTES. I want to get your reaction to it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any President, with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR and Lincoln, but, you know, just in terms of what we've got and done in modern history.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOB SCHIEFFER: So [laughs] as incumbent Presidents often do they give themselves good reviews. Can anyone say even in the middle of a presidency this is going to be a successful or an unsuccessful presidency?

Yeah, there were plenty of Americans who thought this was pretty funny when it first aired last December.

What wasn't funny was how the clip Schieffer played Sunday wasn't included in the actual 60 Minutes broadcast.

As NewsBusters reported at the time, Obama's boastful remarks were only available at the CBS website.

Maybe it's because a lot of people at CBS besides Schieffer thought they were too hysterical to share with the television public.

Given Schieffer's on-air reaction almost six months later, can you blame them?