CNN’s Candy Crowley had top Obama adviser David Axelrod on the defense this morning during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union“.
The CNN host pointed out that former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Clinton ally, had said the only reason Obama has been up in the polls has been a series of missteps by the Romney campaign and not because of any sort of clear vision.
“What is different about a second term President Obama than a first term?” Crowley asked.
But Axelrod immediately turned to his talking points, saying that the economy has come a long way from where it was losing 800,000 jobs per month during the height of the recession. He then said some “5 million” private-sector jobs had been created under President Obama – somehow adding 1 million new jobs to the 4 million figure he stated last month.
FactCheck.org called the job number “disinformation” when it was invoked by DNC keynote speaker Julian Castro earlier this month.
Crowley pressed Axelrod for specifics on what the President would do to get job numbers back to pre-recession numbers. The Obama strategist replied with talking points, saying Obama would deal with the deficit, improve education and invest in research and development.
But Crowley was not satisfied.
“But you are not giving specific proposals,” Crowley said, as Axelrod became testy, noting Obama’s plan to hire 100,000 new math and science teachers and training 2 million new workers in the nation’s community colleges.
Axelrod again refused to answer Crowley’s questions as to whether a second Obama term would be a carbon copy of the first.
