The New Yorker on Thursday released excerpts of the much-discussed interview with President Obama that didn’t make it into print, and there was one stop-the-presses bombshell that will shock everyone who thought they understood the man:

Obama thinks he’s been caricatured by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh!

In parts of the interview by New Yorker editor that didn’t make it into the magazine but were posted Thursday, Obama told New Yorker’s David Remnick he’s not getting the credit he deserves for being a sport. Apparently, he’s tired of hearing how well former House Speaker Tip O’Neil (a thoroughly unpleasant lib) and Ronald Reagan (one of the greatest presidents in history) got along.

“But had Tip O’Neill not seen it to be in his interests to do a deal with Ronald Reagan because he had a whole bunch of conservative … Democrats whose districts had been won by Reagan, and had Reagan not been looking at polls from his advisers telling him that Social Security was a very popular program and that he couldn’t be seen as antagonistic toward it, it wouldn’t have mattered how many drinks Reagan and Tip O’Neill had together,” Obama told Remnick.

So Obama had to be president before he learned American politics really revolves around self-interest.

He apparently also had to become president to find out men and women elected to Congress actually represent the people who voted for them.

“I think probably, just from a purely political point of view, the bigger challenge that I’ve had has to do with the fact that there is a core group of Republican House members in particular who know that I lost their districts by 25 or 30 points, and that there is a Republican base of voters for whom compromise with me is a betrayal.”

And guess who he blames for that Republican base?

“Another way of putting it, I guess, is that the issue has been the inability of my message to penetrate the Republican base so that they feel persuaded that I’m not the caricature that you see on Fox News or Rush Limbaugh, but I’m somebody who is interested in solving problems and is pretty practical, and that, actually, a lot of the things that we’ve put in place worked better than people might think.”

Actually, the “caricature” of Obama conservatives share, whether they’re in broadcast or at the local bar, is that the president is a narcissistic neophyte who — when he isn’t trying to force changes that are abhorrent to sensible people in this country abhor — is in way over his head.

The New Yorker probably didn’t intend it, lest it be accused of committing something related to journalism, but these “bonus quotes” just prove how true that picture is.

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Joe Saunders

Joe Saunders, a 25-year newspaper veteran, is a staff writer and editor for BizPac Review who lives in Tallahassee and covers capital and Florida politics. Email Joe at [email protected].

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