Obama Admits the Surge worked on O’Reilly’s ‘No Spin Zone’

It was billed as the ultimate smackdown, and it certainly promised to be a wonk vs. wacko match: the cerebral, conciliatory Senator Barack Obama versus Bill O’Reilly, Fox News Channel’s most irascible, combative anchor: a commentator who calls liberals “loons” and “pinheads” and on Thursday’s show described reporters scrutinizing Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as “sniveling, left-wing, wine-drinking, brie-eating.”

  The topic was national security, and their tone was civil, but thankfully not too civil: Mr. O’Reilly, as is his wont, spoke brusquely, interrupted, argued and didn’t let his guest off the hook. He told Mr. Obama he had “bloviated” in parts of his convention speech, but congratulated him on his early opposition to the war, saying he had been “perspicacious.”

Mr. O’Reilly then demanded that his guest admit that he was wrong to oppose the military surge. Mr. Obama didn’t give in; he repeated previous qualifications but did go farther, and less equivocally, than before in acknowledging that the surge had worked. “It’s succeeded beyond our wildest dreams,” he said. Mr. Obama is known for the subtlety and nuance of his answers; Mr. O’Reilly has no patience for either. And accordingly, they had a bracing exchange, in what was the first of four segments to be spread over four days.