Obama Talks One on One

Over at our news partner RNN, “Real Politics” show anchor Richard French recently got the chance to do a one-on-one interview with presidential candidate Barack Obama, one of the leading Democratic contenders.

Portions of the interview will air on tomorrow night’s RNN news broadcasts, between 5 and 7 p.m., with the entire interview to air at 8 p.m.

Excerpts from the interview after the jump.

ON CHANGE

“I get a sense right now that the American people might be ready for some big changes. I thought to myself—in that environment—a message that has some truth telling to it. A message that has some hope to it might appeal to people and I think the one thing I seem to be able to do effectively is to get people to think about their common values and their common ideals and to bring people together. And to bridge the divides of race and region and even party—and that was the reason I decided to go forward.”

ON THE MEDIA

“We’ve got a 24-hour news cycle—we’ve got the internet and blogs and talk radio. You can imagine a lot of thing that Bobby Kennedy said – if he was in today’s environment—would be skewed on Rush Limbaugh—all sorts of TV venues would dissect every single word that he said. So I think the environment it tougher now. I think the american people, though, are still hungry for some truth telling. I think they know that things are out of whack. They feel a huge disconnect form Washington and part of the reason I think so far the campaign’s been successful has been that people sense this is an opportunity to break out of the usual political conventions. And it’s hard to do. And the jury is still out as to whether it will work or not.”

ON HIS MISTAKES

“Some of the mistakes I make have nothing to do with the environment or the media. It just has to do with—I make mistakes. And all of us are going to make mistakes. But I do think that despite whatever mistakes I’m making—people still seem to be hungry for something new. They want to turn the page on this last sad chapter in American History with the war in Iraq, inattentiveness to issues like health care and that’s a huge opportunity that I hope our campaign can take advantage of and I hope democrats can take advantage of in 2008.”

http://polhudson.lohudblogs.com/2007/06/13/obama-talks-one-on-one-with-rnn/