LESLEY STAHL: Arianna Huffington, thank you. Welcome to wowOwow. You’re the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post; you’ve written 12 books; you’re a political commentator. One does not know even where to start to ask you questions. But let’s try this. Every time I point my clicker at the television set and surf around, I see Barack Obama. He’s making announcements, he’s giving interviews, he’s there all the time. There’s a debate about why he’s in our faces so much and whether he’s overexposed. What do you think about that? What do you think about the president and is he overdoing it?

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: I don’t think so, Lesley. I believe that Obama’s strength from the first time he burst onto the national scene with a speech at the convention in 2004, to the last speech he gave this morning …

LESLEY: Yes. Exactly, my point.

ARIANNA: That is one of his great gifts, the ability to communicate, the ability to be not just the commander in chief and the chief executive, but the teacher in chief. He’s a teacher. He’s a natural-born teacher and his speech that kind of most epitomizes that is his speech at Georgetown about the economy, where he literally walked us through what was happening.

LESLEY: If he would do that, and let us absorb it, that’s one thing. But then every day there’s another subject. Today he announced the cyber czar and yesterday it was the cars.  I begin to think maybe it’s a little too much.

ARIANNA: It’s working so far. I think it will stop working if the economy, the real economy as opposed to the stock-market economy, does not improve. If we don’t see any real shift in unemployment numbers, foreclosure numbers, credit-card default numbers, then I think people may begin to feel that they want results, and … and simply talking, which I think is incredibly important. I don’t think we should ever underestimate the power of leadership through rhetoric, through explaining, through spreading confidence – which has been working because, if you look at the numbers of consumer confidence, for example, they’re entirely based on imponderables. The numbers about how you feel about current conditions are not good at all because current conditions are based on data. But the numbers about the future are dramatically better because they’re not based on data. They’re based on hope.

LESLEY: One would have the impression, based on his popularity, that politically he is bringing the country over a little bit to the left, that he’s created a sea change – basically turning the country more bluish. But I saw a recent Pew Poll that said actually we haven’t changed all that much; in terms of liberal versus conservative we’re still pretty much a 50/50 country. What do you make of that? It’s interesting.

ARIANNA: Actually, you know, Lesley, I feel that this left/right way of looking at the world is very obsolete; that if you look at the major problems that we are facing – and let’s take health care, there is … you don’t have to be a progressive or a liberal or on the left to be in favor of some form of universal health coverage. I was just on CNN now and we discussed a poll they just brought out that shows large majorities in favor of government providing health care. Clearly it’s not just liberals or those on the left who want that.