In an interview, while flying with President Obama on board Air Force One, the New York Times hits one of Obama’s raw nerves.

The “edited transcript” [the Times admits questions have been paraphrased, and some responses have been condensed], published by the Times shows that nearly a quarter of the 35-minute interview was taken up by a debate about whether Obama is a socialist.

The Times asked Obama whether he is  a socialists in the fifth question:

Q. The first six weeks have given people a glimpse of your spending priorities. Are you a socialist as some people have suggested?

A. You know, let’s take a look at the budget – the answer would be no.

Obama’s answer is very hard to accept for anyone who has actually looked at his $4 trillion tax and borrow budget [yo can read Obama's budget overview here], which contains a $693 billion partial down payment for Obama’s so-called “health care reform,” and a trillion-dollar tax increase that is not nearly enough to pay for Obama’s vision of having the government do everything.

The New York Times couldn’t accept Obama’s answer either. The reporters wondered what would be wrong with saying yes:

Q. Is there anything wrong with saying yes?

A. Let’s just take a look at what we’ve done. We’ve essentially said that, number one, we’re going to reduce non-defense discretionary spending to the lowest levels in decades. So that part of the budget that doesn’t include entitlements and doesn’t include defense – that we have the most control over – we’re actually setting on a downward trajectory in terms of percentage of G.D.P. So we’re making more tough choices in terms of eliminating programs and cutting back on spending than any administration has done in a very long time. We’re making some very tough choices.

What we have done is in a couple of critical areas that we have put off action for a very long time, decided that now is the time to ask. One is on health care. As you heard in the health care summit yesterday, there is uniform belief that the status quo is broken and if we don’t do anything, we will be in a much worse place, both fiscally as well as in terms of what’s happening to families and businesses than if we did something.

The second area is on energy, which we’ve been talking about for decades. Now, in each of those cases, what we’ve said is, on our watch, we’re going to solve problems that have weakened this economy for a generation. And it’s going to be hard and it’s going to require some costs. But if you look on the revenue side what we’re proposing, what we’re looking at is essentially to go back to the tax rates that existed during the 1990s when, as I recall, rich people were doing very well. In fact everybody was doing very well. We have proposed a cap and trade system, which could create some additional costs, but the vast majority of that we want to give back in the form of tax breaks to the 95 percent of working families.

So if you look at our budget, what you have is a very disciplined, fiscally responsible budget, along with an effort to deal with some very serious problems that have been put off for a very long time. And that I think is exactly what I proposed during the campaign. We are following through on every commitment that we’ve made, and that’s what I think is ultimately going to get our economy back on track.

Just words propaganda. During the campaign, at the April 14, 2008 debate with Hillary, Obama said he believes in the principle that you pay as you go and it would be “irresponsible” take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children and our grandchildren. But, with his so-called stimulus and his national debt busting budget, Obama is well on his way to maxing out our Chinese Credit card.

The Times reporters tried again:

Q. So to people who suggested that you are more liberal than you suggested on the campaign, you say, what?

A. I think it would be hard to argue, Jeff. We have delivered on every promise that we’ve made so far. We said that we would end the war in Iraq and we’ve put forward a responsible plan.

Not every promise. What about transparency? According to the PolitiFact Obameter, of his more than 500 campaign promises, Obama has kept 16, compromised 7, broken 2, stalled on 2, has 38 in the works and has taken no action on 446.

The Times reporters tried again:

Q. In terms of spending.

A. Oh, in terms of spending. Well, if you look at spending, what we said during the campaign was, is that we were going to raise taxes on the top five percent. That’s what our budget does. We said that we’d give a tax cut to 95 percent of working Americans. That’s exactly what we have done. That’s the right thing to do. It provides relief to families that basically saw no growth in wages and incomes over the last decade. It asks for a little bit more for people like myself who benefited greatly over the last decade and took a disproportionate share of a growing economy. I actually don’t think that anybody who examines our budget can come away with the conclusion that somehow this is a – that this is in any way different than what we proposed during the campaign.

But more to the point, it is what’s needed in order to put this economy on a more stable footing. One of the problems that we’ve had is that we have put off big problems again and again and again and again. And as I’ve said in my speech to the joint session of Congress, at some point there is a day of reckoning. Well, that day of reckoning has come.

What I’m refusing to do and what I’ve instructed my staff that we will not do is to try to kick the can down the road, to try to paper over problems, try to use gimmicks on budgets, try to pretend that health care is not an issue, to continue with a situation where we are exporting – importing – more and more oil from the middle east, continuing with a situation in which average working families are seeing their wages flat line. At some point, we’ve got to take on these problems.

More propaganda.

The Times reporters try one more time, but Obama has had enough:

Q. Is there one word name for your philosophy? If you’re not a socialist, are you a liberal? Are you progressive? One word?

A. No, I’m not going to engage in that.

Later, Obama is so worried about the socialist charge that he called the times so he could call President Bush a socialist:

At 2:30 p.m., President Obama called The New
York Times, saying he wanted to clarify a point from the interview.
Here is a transcript of that brief call:

President Obama: Just one thing I was thinking about as I was getting on the copter. It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question. I did think it might be useful to point out that it wasn’t under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks. It wasn’t on my watch. And it wasn’t on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement – the prescription drug plan without a source of funding. And so I think it’s important just to note when you start hearing folks through [sic] these words around that we’ve actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles and that some of the same folks who are throwing the word socialist around can’t say the same.

Q. So who’s watch are we talking about here?

A. Well, I just think it’s clear by the time we got here, there already had been an enormous infusion of taxpayer money into the financial system. And the thing I constantly try to emphasize to people if that coming in, the market was doing fine, nobody would be happier than me to stay out of it. I have more than enough to do without having to worry the financial system. The fact that we’ve had to take these extraordinary measures and intervene is not an indication of my ideological preference, but an indication of the degree to which lax regulation and extravagant risk taking has precipitated a crisis.

I think that covers it.

In the end, when Obama can’t adequately cover his socialist tendencies, he does what Democrats have done for eight years — bash Bush. Did Obama forget about the plot to demonize Limbaugh? Maybe, because the Democrats’ failed plot has nearly doubled Limbaugh’s audience, Obama figured that distraction tactic wasn’t working so well and decided Bush bashing was more effective.