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Comment by fr0sty | Hacker News Reader

He answered questions on these topics:

  1. Space Race
  2. Internet Freedom
  3. Favorite Basketball Player
  4. Small-Business tax breaks
  5. First Activity on Nov 7
  6. Most Difficult Decision
  7. Money in Politics
  8. White House Beer Recipe
  9. Jobs
  10. Work/Life Balance

Hard hitting stuff there

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What would you have asked? Those are all pretty topical this particular election season. Any 10 questions seem inadequate for a president, no?

Also, he brought up Afghanistan on his own in response to the 'hardest decision' question. That's not exactly a fluff answer.

They are largely boilerplate answers to softball questions. Nothing you couldn't get from listening to a White House press conference.

Questions about the state of Iraq, Syria, Libya, Iran, Egypt, et al would have been more interesting. Characterizing sending more troops as a hard decision is not too surprising.

Ok, but all you're gonna get from him on foreign relations ESPECIALLY is the exact boilerplate that comes out of the state department. There are actually policy reasons to stay boilerplate on that stuff, above and beyond political considerations.

That said, he did come about as close as he could to acknowledging the surge in Afghanistan didn't accomplish much. And he called for a constitutional amendment on Citizen's United, which he apparently hadn't done in public before (according to news outlets trumpeting it).

Bradley Fucking Manning?

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