Last night Lesley Stahl interviewed Eric Cantor on 60 Minutes. Cantor was evasive and downright smarmy.
The Majority Leader: Rep. Eric Cantor
Rep. Eric Cantor: I understand people's frustration, I really do. I mean, there's a lot of people unemployed. A lot of people who've lost hope right now.
Lesley Stahl: But they're frustrated with the Congress. That you're playing games, it feels like.
Cantor: There's not.. there's no games. What we're trying to do is trying to do what's good for this country.
Stahl: Why go through this brinksmanship, gamesmanship, one-upsmanship? Explain it. Maybe there's a real good answer.
Cantor: But ultimately this is part of the legislative process that I know it's frustrating. I live it.
This is part of the obstruction process is closer to the truth.
Stahl: With both sides dug in, five attempts to get a deficit reduction deal failed. Cantor then proposed that the two sides put off their major disagreements and just vote on what had been agreed to in previous negotiations which was roughly $10 in spending cuts for every one dollar raised thru revenues. That set off a testy exchange between Cantor and the president at a White House meeting.
Stahl: Didn't the president say repeatedly in the meeting that he wasn't going to agree to it without more revenues?
Cantor: Who's not compromising there? Who's not compromising there?
Stahl: Well, they would say you because you just wanted spending cuts. And I'm just trying to figure out where's the compromise coming from? Where's the compromise?
Cantor: There's plenty of compromise. We all know that there are ways to reduce spending in Washington, okay.
Cantor's profession of concern for the unemployed while trying to tank the economy was as unconvincing as Cantor's calim that doing things largely his way constitutes a compromise on his part.
I wonder if Cantor's press secretary who arranged this interview to include a visit to the Cantor Household to depict Eric Cantor as a family man and give his image a makeover by showing a warm fuzzy side would consider this interview a P.R. success? Cantor comes off exuding all the warmth of a lizard IMHO.
The same press secretary butted into the interview from off camera to "correct" Lesley Stahl's statement of fact, that Ronald Reagan raised some taxes.
Cantor's press aide did everything in his power to make this a puff piece, until he couldn't control himself and pulled a Joe Wilson yelling "Liar!" from the dining room.
Watch the whole 60 Minutes interview