Barack Obama got a little touchy over a question from The New York Times during a recent interview:

President Obama was so concerned that he may have mishandled a question from New York Times reporters about whether he was a socialist, that he called the paper to clarify his position. The president initially answered the question aboard Air Force One saying, "Let's take a look at the budget, the answer would be no."

The president explained he wanted a return to the tax rates of the 1990s by giving a tax-cut to 95 percent of workers. But the president may have felt that was too dismissive, and called the Times from the Oval Office explaining: "It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question... it wasn't under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks. it wasn't on my watch."

Asked whose watch he was talking about he said: "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."

Here's the 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.

The Times didn't buy it and followed with this, "Is there anything wrong with saying yes?" Obama then gives a long, drawn out answer that is just loaded with examples of his expansion of an already huge government.

Then comes the next question:

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.

Really? "I'm not liberal because we're delivering on promises and we're pulling out of Iraq." What kind of BS response is that?

Obama was so concerned about the question that he called back and not only clarified his answer, but took a moment to blame Bush (and rightly so) for his expansion of government:

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 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.

Free-marketers were at odds with Bush for much of his administration, including the expansion of Medicare. Obama's forgets that he voted for TARP and his party is also responsible, along with many Republicans, for aiding the Bush Administration in expanding Medicare.

It's clear being labeled a socialist bothers him. Everything he is doing is leading to more centralization of government. How is that not socialism?