President Barack Obama is pictured with host David Letterman during a break at a taping of CBS The Late Show with David Letterman, Monday, Sept. 21, 2009, at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York.
President Barack Obama is pictured with host David Letterman during a break at a taping of CBS The Late Show with David Letterman, Monday, Sept. 21, 2009, at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York.
President Barack Obama laughs with host David Letterman during a break at a taping of CBS The Late Show with David Letterman, Monday, Sept. 21, 2009, at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York.
After breezing through a battery of TV interviews Sunday with hardly a revealing moment, President Obama finally let out some fresh information Monday night on the "Late Show with David Letterman."
He let slip a few personal details about his daughters, an off-limits topic elsewhere. He disclosed the name of a movie he saw recently with his wife. And he managed to talk a little about healthcare and Afghanistan too.
The information wasn't exactly breaking news, but the president has been busy hammering home an old message about the overhaul of the healthcare system.
In a more personal moment, Obama talked about how tough the homework load is at Sidwell Friends School, the Quaker school his daughters, Sasha and Malia, attend in Washington.
"We decided there weren't going to be any fancy camps during the summer," Obama said. "They basically just goofed off during the summer . . . which I couldn't do."
Obama also offered some insight into date nights with the first lady when shown a picture of the two of them wearing 3D glasses. They were watching the movie "Up" at the time, he said.
He also divulged that the Obama girls have slumber parties at the White House and go to sleepovers at their friends' houses, which requires that parents get "frisked" by the Secret Service.
In a serious moment, the president showed a hint of agreement with some points in a new report from the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who believes that the mission in Afghanistan could fail without more troops and a different strategy for tamping down the insurgency, according to a document that was revealed in the Washington Post on Monday.
As for the war in Afghanistan, Obama said he knows some people want him to bring troops home, and others are calling for him to increase U.S. force levels to combat the insurgency. The top U.S. commander there is warning the war could be lost without more troops.
Obama said he won't make a decision on sending in more troops, though, until he completes a comprehensive review of the war effort and settles on his next strategy.
"I'm going to be asking some very hard questions," Obama said.
Obama's visit made him the first sitting president to appear on Letterman's program. He had been on Letterman's show five times before, though, most recently in September 2008.
The White House said it was a good way for him to reach yet another audience as Obama wraps up a blitz of TV appearances, trying mainly to build support for his health care plan.
As president, Obama also went on NBC's "Tonight" show when it was hosted by Jay Leno.
After the taping, the president returned to his midtown Manhattan hotel and quietly emerged a while later in gym clothes and a baseball cap. His destination: the church across the street for some basketball with his aides.
Tomorrow starts Obama's main mission in New York: His participation in the United Nations General Assembly.
Over the last seven years, Obama said, "our strategy drifted. . . . We didn't have a clear sense of what it was we were trying to accomplish."
Obama also weighed in with a brief, but sharp, point about race, another subject he typically avoids.
Is all the vitriol about his domestic agenda really about race? Letterman asked the first black president.
"It's important to realize that I was actually black before the election," Obama pointed out. "That tells you a lot, I think, about where the country is at."
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