Coburn: I’m protective of Obama, and he’s protective of me

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said that both he and President Obama have a strong mutual affection carrying over from their time in the Senate, though the two have extremely different political views.

“We’re very good friends. We’re totally different, but we respect each other immensely, and we have a personal relationship that’s outside our politics,” Coburn told The Oklahoman in an interview about his relationship with the president. “Who else does he have on my side that he has a relationship with?”

Coburn said that he and Obama struck a chord when both went through orientation as freshman Senators after the 2004 election. And though Coburn campaigned for Obama’s 2008 opponent, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the friendship persists to today — even leading to a hug between Obama and Coburn after the president’s joint-session speech to Congress last month. (Coburn said he received about 50 “highly critical” letters about the embrace.)

“I’m adamantly against 80 percent of President Obama’s policies,” the Oklahoma Republican up for reelection in 2010 explained. “But he is an honest liberal. He said he was going to nationalize health care, he said he was going to do all these things. And he’s doing it.”

“He’s pretty protective of me, and I’m protective of him in terms of our relationship,” Coburn added.