What do you expect? When you're in an office, and I mean a high office, you represent that office and all that office represents. Right or wrong, the office of the President of the United States represents America on the international scene.
And people are unfair. People take things out of context. Occasionally, people just make shit up and shove it into your mouth. You can't stop them, but you can avoid helping them to the extent it's physically possible.
There's always going to be a noise floor in politics: The rampant idiocy, blatant lying, and absolute unreasoning psychotic hatred honestly felt by certain groups. Going off-message can either raise or lower that floor, and the sad fact is a single bad statement raises it a lot higher than a large number of good statements can lower it. Look at Muskie: He lost the nomination in part because he possibly cried on stage. Possibly. It could have been snow, but the implication was there. Nixon's lies hurt him, but it was likely the 'tears' that broke him.
Then frankly he shouldn't be going on a forum known for its impertinent (to say the least) questions and saying "Ask Me Anything".
The abuse of Reddit AMA for boring, dull, traditional PR purposes takes one of its more interesting contributions to the internet and makes it just another venue for the Same Old Thing.
If a politician wants to be careful, let them go to the old careful outlets.
It's precisely what I'd expect, but that doesn't mean I can't be disappointed by it. I expect the worst from our politicians and my expectations are usually met, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like more.
I absolutely agree that it's tough to be honest and off-the-cuff in politics, much less modern politics. However, as someone else said, no one should look at Obama and think about how 'hip' he is for using Reddit as a phone-in for stances he's already talked about. It's called "Ask Me Anything". I would have even been a little impressed if he were honest and said "AMAA".
And people are unfair. People take things out of context. Occasionally, people just make shit up and shove it into your mouth. You can't stop them, but you can avoid helping them to the extent it's physically possible.
There's always going to be a noise floor in politics: The rampant idiocy, blatant lying, and absolute unreasoning psychotic hatred honestly felt by certain groups. Going off-message can either raise or lower that floor, and the sad fact is a single bad statement raises it a lot higher than a large number of good statements can lower it. Look at Muskie: He lost the nomination in part because he possibly cried on stage. Possibly. It could have been snow, but the implication was there. Nixon's lies hurt him, but it was likely the 'tears' that broke him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Muskie#Presidential_cand...