Good Grief.
First, Looking at the video, the remarks are unprepared, the result of a somewhat heated debate he was having with the fellow. Second, he never looks into camera. Third, the video is obviously taken under very informal circumstances, using the microphone of the camera instead of a professional variety. This is off a cell phone.
The President can say, quite simply, that he never intended his views to get out, to prejudice any jury. It's also reasonable to say that if it weren't for the people who published this video online, this opinion would have never been made public. So why is HE automatically found guilty of trying to influence the jury?
You can't leak a video onto the net, and then claim that the influence being felt is purely the Presidents, and that it represented the message he wanted to get out.
I know many of the decisions he made were controversial. We complain about banksters, but do we realize that one reason why we've gotten so few prosecutions is that Bush kept the SEC and other agency's hands off of the banks for the most part?
Or, that much of what they were doing, despite everything, was legal because of the blackhole of regulation on the Derivatives market?
I think some people fail to realize that in any political system, it is the ability to stick together as a political party that determines your fate, more than the ability to stick to a message or stick to a campaign promise. I never expected the ideal out of this President, or the previous Congress. I expected a struggle.
Some, though, are desperate to get what they want. So desperate, in fact, that they'll claim first, and think things out later. They'll follow the latest proclamations from the latest pundits, and mistake trenchant rhetoric for wise counsel.
You may get an emotional charge out of your hyperbole, but you also get carried away. Folks need to realize that to beat the Republicans, we must do the hard work of pushing policy against multiple setbacks and defeats. If the first of those scare us off, discourage us, turn us against our leaders, then we become easy to scatter, make scatterbrained. We have to be stronger-willed, and stronger focused than that.
This isn't merely about incrementalism, this about getting the means to exercise power. We don't have to follow some strict rulebook to get it, but we do have to adapt to the way the system works, and we do have to expect that in the short term, we will be seen to lose. We can't get so wrapped up in the short term, or so obsessed about the past (whether distant or recent) that we forget to do what we need to do now to change things.
Accusing the President of a Criminal Offense like this is showy, but ultimately a stupid move. The author failed to account for basic facts of how the video was obtained, in making his premature charge.