I'll have to give Tim Russert of Meet the Press some credit for his interview with Bush. He treated him as a President who's answerable to the voters, not as Bush the Magnificent, Liberator of Peoples. Russert is not much liked by liberals. He delights in going after Democrats. And he's notorious for running with the conventional wisdom of the day in his questions and commentaries.
As a scorecard, we could look at the list of questions that Joe Conason suggested for the interview. Conason gave five questions but the last two both related to deficits and taxes.
1. The AWOL question. My initial impression was that Timmy did pretty well here. He got Bush to agree to release his records relating to Guard service. He got him to say that he did serve in the National Guard in Alabama in 1972. That will give the press good follow-up points.
2. The missed Guard physical in July 1972. Timmy passed on that one.
3. Dressing in military garb on the Abraham Lincoln. Passed on that one, too.
4. Deficits and taxes. Timmy did okay on this one, although he didn't press him specifically on the tax cuts for the wealthiest. But he did question him about the notion of repeated tax cuts during what Bush described over and over again as war time.
I assume Conason took it for granted that questions about the intelligence prior to the Iraq War would come up. And the first half hour of the interview was occupied with questions related to the war.
On the whole, I thought Timmy came off like a real journalist asking appropriate, probing questions. It was a decent interview in which Bush was required to defend his record on a number of issues that concern the voters.
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