How did Mr. Potato Head treat Bush on MTP during the 2000 campaign?

[buycitgo]

shouldn't that interview or those interviews (did he do more than one?) give a good idea of what's in store Sunday?

Washington Week in Review is discussing this as we speak...some bimbette from the National Journal is saying that dumbo is doing this out of at least some measure of desperation, just said Russert "is known as a tough interviewer" ?????!!!!!!

next, a WSJ reporter says "he should be able to make it through an hour," saying he's disciplined (meaning he repeats self endlessly, won't answer questions?).

AWOL did come up briefly, in passing, but wasn't discussed at all.

his "prickly" nature, regarding close questioning, was mentioned, again briefly.....then the show WENT OFF the AIR!--returning with John Kerry from BBC!

did this happen elsewhere?

anyway, they DID not mention that this interview will be taped.

Which reminds me, was he able to insist on taping vs. live during the campaign? WHY did NBC allow this? has anyone asked them about that?

[joeybee12]

1. In answer to your question in the header--ever hear of the term "rim job"?

Enough said.

[Southsideirish]

2. Diane Sawyer managed to get under his skin - can Russert do

any less? His heavyweight newsman credentials are on the line.
The whole world will be watching!

[buycitgo]

3. excellent point! and she was QUITE the sycophant the rest of the time

check my next ASTOUNDING post, and you'll see why dumbo has less to worry from that fat, disgusting piglet than he did from the unctuous former beauty contestant

[buycitgo]

4. OK....tell me you've seen something MORE disgusting than THIS!

from the ineffable Daily Howler.

I don't remember this at all....back from 1999

Candidate Bush did Meet the Press on November 21, 1999, shortly after a pair of flaps had roiled the Washington press corps. On October 31, Time had reported that Naomi Wolf was advising Candidate Gore, and this led to a series of foolish flaps that continued throughout the election. But three days later, on November 3, Boston TV reporter Andy Hiller ambushed Candidate Bush with a fiendish foreign relations “pop quiz.” Bush was stumped by Hiller’s questions, and looked a bit shaky in the process. Each of these episodes had received wide attention in the weeks before Bush did Meet the Press.

How did Russert handle these matters? He never mentioned Bush’s “pop quiz,” directly or indirectly. Indeed, in the next day’s New York Times, Frank Bruni puzzled a bit over Russert’s milquetoast performance:

BRUNI: Because Mr. Bush had not done a live television interview of this length since he announced his candidacy in June, the appearance was widely anticipated as a chance to see how nimbly he could negotiate an array of policy questions…
Although Mr. Bush had just given a foreign policy speech on Friday and had previously drawn criticism for several gaffes when talking about international affairs, Mr. Russert did not dwell long on global matters.

That was a bit of an overstatement by Bruni, but Russert was no bulldog this day. In particular, he didn’t allude to the “pop quiz,” or to other alleged gaffes which had drawn attention. But man, how he hit on Naomi Wolf! In what can only be viewed as a world-class pander, Russert tossed several softballs to Bush midway through the hour. His Wolf-spinning started with this:
RUSSERT: One out of every three kids born in this country, born to a single mom.
BUSH: Yeah.

RUSSERT: Millions of them teen-age moms. Let me show you what Naomi Wolf, an advisor to Vice President Gore, has to say about this issue and put it on the screen: “We should address the teen abortion and unwanted pregnancy rate by doing what Dr. Elders lost her job as surgeon general simply for mentioning: we should teach petting—‘sexual gradualism’—and let our kids know that there are many ways of having pleasure and intimacy that don’t involve intercourse. This is an agenda both the Left and the center can agree on, for it’s hardly a radical notion. Mutual masturbation: history shows it’s the old-fashioned, Main Street, American way. If we teach kids about other kinds of sexual exploration that help them wait for intercourse until they are really ready, we let girls find out about their desire, give them back power in erotic negotiation, and let kids have an option not to go immediately ‘from zero to sixty.’ Teaching sexual gradualism is as sensible as teaching kids to drive.”

Journalism textbooks should present this moment as the ultimate Sunday pander. Russert quoted—at interminable length—the most controversial part of Wolf’s 1997 book, Promiscuities. Of course, no one had ever said that Wolf was counseling Gore on this topic, and Gore, of course, had never espoused anything like this position. But there it was, on Meet the Press, offered up as a softball to Bush. “It’s pathetic,” Bush replied, and he and Russert went back and forth on “sexual gradualism,” with Russert pretending to speak for Wolf. (“Naomi Wolf said she’s being realistic. She’s treating teen-agers as they are.”) Softballs seldom get mooshier. And incredibly, after taking a commercial break, Russert brought Wolf up again! Incredibly, here was his opening question:
RUSSERT: And we’re back, talking to Governor George W. Bush. We’re live from Austin, Texas. Let me ask you, Governor, about the issue of abortion—
BUSH: Yes.

RUSSERT: —because Ms. Wolf and others suggest that perhaps sometimes abortion may be an alternative, although not an appropriate one.

But what could possibly have been the reason for mentioning Wolf in that context? In fact, Candidate Gore had “suggested that perhaps sometimes abortion may be an alternative” (so had Candidate Bush, by the way); there was no imaginable reason for bringing up Wolf—except to serve another softball. Mentioning Wolf two separate times—but failing to mention Bush’s own recent problems—Russert sketched a textbook example of how to stage a Sunday pander. But what did he do, some four years later, when a major Dem hopeful appeared on his program? He staged a silly “pop quiz” of his own, then scolded the Dem for his lack of knowledge. Is it any wonder that many Dems think Russert has two sets of standards?

can you beLIEVE that? rather than ask him ONE question about his complete IGnorance of foreign affairs, he went MENTAL over Naomi Wolf, perseverating like a frickin autist (no offense, sorry) over her, for what possible reason, other than to fill time/take heat off the moron in chief?