The Washington Post's Bob Woodward made a spectacularly delicious comment to MSNBC's David Axelrod on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday.
After President Obama's former senior advisor claimed that the administration in 2012 "tested everything" concerning how they could defeat a Republican challenger including polling how an Obama/Clinton ticket would look if Hillary replaced Joe Biden, Woodward said, "Everything but ObamaCare" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
DAVID GREGORY, HOST: I want to switch a little bit and talk about politics here, and the book "Double Down: Game Change 2012." I asked Governor Romney about it, and we'll talk about Chris Christie in a minute, maybe after the break. Let's talk about the role of the Clintons, who seem to be ever-present in our politics, and they were. They write in the book about the prospect of switching out Biden, putting Hillary Clinton in place. David, you say didn't happen like that?
DAVID AXELROD, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR, FORMER SENIOR ADVISOR TO PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, I was there, I'll tell you exactly what happened. That was the buzz in the political community in the fall of 2011. It was raised that, "Well, we should take a look and see if that really even makes a difference." There were no focus groups; there was no big project.
We put a question in a poll where we split the poll and we tested the Obama/Biden ticket and the Obama/Clinton ticket against the presumed Republican ticket. And what we found was what people always find when they test these things, which is the effect was de minimis. People don't vote for vice presidents, they vote for presidents. It would have been a disastrous decision. To replace a good man and a good vice president would have looked disloyal and desperate. That's the way we all felt at the time.
KATTY KAY, BBC: You took it seriously enough to poll it though.
AXELROD: We felt that due diligence required that we-- Katty, let me tell you, we tested everything. And that was our job.
BOB WOODWARD, WASHINGTON POST: Everything but Obamacare!
As you can see from the picture above, even the BBC's Katty Kay thought this was funny.
You gotta love it!
