I watched a little of George W. Bush on Meet the Press and thought he did poorly. He seemed to be clinging to the notion that if you act with a pure heart, you can't possibly be accused of being a poor president. (I think that was Jimmy Carter's attitude, too.) Even if the public buys that Bush's intentions and courage are admirable, I think they'll still demand some sort of reckoning for the vast disparity between what we were told, pre-war, about Weapons of Mass Destruction…and what now seems to have been the case. Most of those who believe that Saddam's ouster was a good thing, well worth however many American lives and dollars it will ultimately have cost us, can't be too comfy with the thought that our leaders were that misinformed in the planning stages. As I understand it, the current excuse is that it was all the C.I.A.'s fault. But of course, we still have absolute confidence in the current administration of the C.I.A. and do not contemplate any changes there.
I have no particular enthusiasm for John Kerry…or any name I'm likely to see on a ballot this year. I suspect we will all spend much of '04 revisiting the Vietnam protest era. Republicans seem to be ready to start tarring Kerry's patriotism and linking him with the likes of Jane Fonda. Democrats are going to flog Bush's National Guard service as far as it will take them. My Press Corps pal says that the wish-dream there is to uncover something that will suggest not just that Bush got special family-related privileges but that he stopped flying due to a drug problem. This is sounding to me a little like the folks who were praying that by keeping the Vince Foster matter alive, they would eventually implicate one or more Clintons in a murder scheme.
Getting back to Meet the Press: It's interesting to see not only the wide mix of reviews for Bush but also for Tim Russert's interrogation. The right-wing websites think it's obvious he had it in for Bush and was doing the Democrats' bidding. The left-wing websites think it's obvious he avoided the kind of follow-up questions that might have shredded Bush's answers. I never thought much of Russert as an interviewer but if he's evoking this range of reactions, he probably did a decent job.