Leading historian Douglas Brinkley sat down with President Barack Obama earlier this month for a 45-minute-long interview set to appear on the Nov. 8 cover of Rolling Stone.
In the article, Brinkley examines how Obama’s accomplishments in health care, the auto industry, and financial regulation, among others, will be viewed through the lens of history, as well as what the president hopes to accomplish in a second term.
For Brinkley, Obama represents a certain type of “progressive firewall,” who stands to protect the achievements of his political forebears, ranging from Theodore Roosevelt’s executive order to save the Grand Canyon from the zinc-copper lobbies to Jimmy Carter’s creation of the departments of energy and education.
“Obama, simply put,” writes Brinkley, “is the curator-in-chief of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society... He is the inheritor of the Progressive movement’s agenda, the last line of defense that prevents America’s hard-won social contract from being defunded into oblivion.”
The Rolling Stone piece is just one element of a pre-election media blitz focused on the president, who appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Wednesday, sat down with Brian Williams for a Rock Center interview on Thursday, and is set to make his case for re-election to younger voters on an MTV special, “Ask Obama Live: An MTV Interview with the President,” airing tonight.
Notably absent from the bull's eye of this media onslaught, however, is Republican challenger Mitt Romney, whose campaign says the candidate has no plans for any additional interviews before the election.
Brinkley will join Hardball Friday night to talk about his interview with the president and about the media whirlwind surrounding him.
Don’t forget to tune in!