Alternate headline: “Obama hands devastating new attack ad to Romney opponents on a silver platter.” If you don’t have time to watch this now, no worries: You’ll be seeing the part about Mitt in eight thousand different GOP primary spots starting early next year. So brutal is it — think what kind of beating Charlie Crist is taking over the photo of him hugging Obama, then multiply by a thousand — that I’m tempted to believe The One set out to mention Romney with that idea in mind. If he can take out a potentially dangerous Republican nominee early in the game by talking him up, why not talk him up? Coming soon: Obama praises Romney as the sort of centrist, statist, secretly pro-choice Republican America needs. Game over, man.

This is also the interview where, in a subtle bit of Alinskyism, he acknowledged that tea partiers have legitimate concerns — except of course for their freaky deaky “Birther” core. After you watch, be sure to read the Heritage Foundation’s response to being dragged into this as some sort of supposed advocate for health-care exchanges. The truth is rather more nuanced. Exit quotation: “[W]e completely disagree that President Obama’s law improves the purchasing power of individuals in the insurance market. On the contrary, it will create a staggeringly complex and costly insurance system that will drive up premiums for Americans.”

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