Washington Post reporter Michael Fletcher’s softball (okay, baseball) question to Obama about Alex Rodriguez’s admission of steroid use might strike some as a chance for the president to address a social or cultural issue. But how surprising or newsworthy was Obama’s answer going to be? Some reporters mocked President Bush in 2004 for condemning steroid use in his State of the Union address, so if it was un-presidential to discuss then, why ask now?

The other hard question: is the degree of toughness President Obama can expect from the black White House correspondents?

It reminds me of the baseball question in the 1996 vice-presidential debate, where Jim Lehrer of PBS brought up the then-recent incident of Roberto Alomar spitting in an umpire’s face:

LEHRER: Mr. Kemp, some are saying these days that something’s gone terribly wrong with the American soul, that we’ve become too mean, too selfish, too uncaring and the spitting incident, how it was handled, the baseball players used as a recent example. What do you think about that?

Jack Kemp turned it into a question about economic opportunity in East L.A. or East Harlem, that civility wasn’t about morality, but about growing the economic pie. The funny part came when Al Gore had to make up for Kemp skipping out on condemning Alomar: “You asked about the incident involving Roberto Alomar. I won’t hesitate to tell you what I think. I think he should have been severely disciplined, suspended perhaps, immediately.”

Kemp let every anti-Clinton voter down by not rebutting Gore: “Alomar should be suspended right now, but the Paula Jones sex-harassment suit has to wait until 2001?”