During the eight years of the Bush administration, liberal outlets such as the Huffington Post often accused the White House of planting questioners in news conferences to ask preplanned questions. But here was Obama fielding a preplanned question asked by a planted questioner—from the Huffington Post.

DANA MILBANK'S write-up of yesterday's presidential press conference is a symphony of whining and huffing. He argues that the president turned a serious event into "the Obama Show" by letting a reporter/blogger for the Huffington Post ask a question that an Iranian had submitted through the website.

True enough. Liberal blogs made a huge stink over Jeff Gannon, an amateur journalist who got to toss questions to President Bush. But it's ridiculous to equate that with what the Huffington Post did yesterday.

Here's the 2005 question that got Mr Gannon into trouble.

Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy. Harry Reid was talking about soup lines. And Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet in the same breath they say that Social Security is rock solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work -- you've said you are going to reach out to these people -- how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?

And here was the question yesterday from Nico Pitney of the Huffington Post.

I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian. We solicited questions last night from people who are still courageous enough to be communicating online, and one of them wanted to ask you this: Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad? And if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn't that a betrayal of what the demonstrators there are working towards?

One question's a softball; the other is tougher than the spring-loaded "gotcha" questions lobbed by more prominent journalists. Chip Reid of NBC News asked the president if he'd toughened his Iran rhetoric because John McCain had taunted him, possibly the least interesting angle of the unfolding Iran crisis. If the press corps wants to keep a liberal website from stealing their thunder they could, just possibly, ask better questions that come from facts on the ground instead of the usual Washington nonsense.

(Photo credit: AFP)