EmailWith the dust of the White House press briefing room still clinging to his finely tailored jacket, former press secretary Jay Carney appeared on CNN alongside longtime Republican hawk John McCain to discuss Barack Obama’s night speech about Isis.
If viewers were hoping for enlightening analysis of a momentous occasion, they will have been sorely disappointed.
CNN, which announced Carney’s hiring as a political commentator earlier in the day, called it a “showdown”, the Blaze, conservative commentator Glenn Beck’s website, deemed it “ultra tense”, and the Huffington Post christened it a “huge fight”.
The arena: Anderson Cooper 360. The contenders: one newly-employed Guided by Voices fan, and one pundit who works as a senator in his downtime. The duel: a professional squabble cloaked as a heated analysis of Obama’s speech.
McCain, who moonlights as an Arizona senator when not providing talk show soundbites, thought it was funny. While Carney sold Obama’s position, McCain chuckled silently to himself.
“Facts are stubborn things, Mr Carney,” said McCain, who freely admitted his support for Obama’s plan while repeatedly accusing the administration, and Carney, of distorting facts.
For his part, Carney steered clear of his go-to line: “I don’t have an answer” (which he used more than 1,900 times while responding to reporters in his last job). Instead, he relied on a new trademark play in the six-minute airing of grievances.
“I think we have to agree to disagree on this,” said Carney at the beginning, and middle, and end, of his debut appearance as a CNN commentator.
The discussion was interspersed with bemused grins from both debaters. Cooper, meanwhile, maintained a poker face until the final seconds of the spat.
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