Obama Says Summers Did 'A Heckuva Job'

President Barack Obama, taping Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart, gave a shout-out to Lawrence Summers – one the outgoing director of the White House National Economic Council probably could have done without.

Summers did “a heckuva job,” Obama said. Stewart quickly admonished: “You don’t want to use that phrase, dude.”

The reference, of course, was to former President George W. Bush’s praise of then-FEMA director Michael Brown’s management of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts – a job widely considered bungled.

The fake news show and interview also touched on a number of topics, from health care to Senate filibuster rules – an evident appeal to younger voters six days before Tuesday’s midterm elections.

The president’s appearance comes in advance of Comedy Central’s rally in Washington this weekend with both Stewart and Steven Colbert – an apparent satire of conservative commentator Glenn Beck’s August rally to “Restore America.”

Here are some highlights from the taping session this evening, from the White House pool report:

– “When we promised during the campaign ‘change you can believe in,’ it wasn’t

change you can believe in 18 months,” Obama said.

– “We have done things that people don’t even know about,” Obama said, prompting Mr. Stewart to ask: “What have you done that people don’t know about? Are you planning a surprise party for us?” Obama replied with his usual list of accomplishments.

– He took issue with Stewart over health care. “Jon, I love your show, but this is something where I have a profound disagreement with you,” he said. “This notion that health care was timid…What happens is it gets discounted because the assumption is we didn’t get 100% of what we wanted, we only get 90% of what we wanted — so let’s focus on the 10% we didn’t get.”

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