David Gregory is Not a Tough Interviewer

10 Comments

1. 

   Phil Perspective on October 15, 2011 at 7:20 pm

   Who is a bigger idiot: Cameron Joseph, David Gregory or Herman Cain?

2. 

   Ed J on October 15, 2011 at 7:26 pm

   for being “tough” but it very much depended on the quality of the opposition. I laughed my ass off the day Richard Clarke ate his lunch. An excerpt from Meet the Press:

   MR. RUSSERT:  Now, when you resigned, you sent a very polite letter to the president:  “It’s been an enormous privilege to serve you these past 24 months.  I will always remember the courage, determination, calm leadership you demonstrated on September 11.  I thank you again for the opportunity to serve you.  You have provided me”–was that just being polite?
   MR. CLARKE:  Yeah.
   MR. RUSSERT:  Or are you now just being disloyal?
   MR. CLARKE:  No.  Well, my mother taught me to be polite.  Let me read another line from the letter, which I have.  I don’t know what you have over there.  But this is the actual letter.  “I will always have fond memories of our briefings for you on cybersecurity.”  Not on terrorism, Tim, because they didn’t allow me to brief him on terrorism.  You know, they’re saying now that when I was afforded the opportunity to talk to him about cybersecurity, it was my choice.  I could have talked about terrorism or cybersecurity.  That’s not true.  I asked in January to brief him, the president, on terrorism, to give him the same briefing I had given Vice President Cheney, Colin Powell and Condi Rice.  And I was told, “You can’t do that briefing, Dick, until after the policy development process.”
   MR. RUSSERT:  Who told you that?
   MR. CLARKE:  Condi Rice.  And I said, “Well, can I brief him on cybersecurity?”  “Oh, yes, you can brief him on that.”  Now, you read my letter to him.  Let’s read his letter back to me.  Maybe you’d like to read it, if you can read this.
   MR. RUSSERT:  Go ahead, please.
   MR. CLARKE:  This is his writing.  This is the president of the United States’ writing.  And when they’re engaged in character assassination of me, let’s just remember that on January 31, 2003:  “Dear Dick, you will be missed. You served our nation with distinction and honor.  You have left a positive mark on our government.”  This is not the normal typewritten letter that everybody gets.  This is the president’s handwriting.  He thinks I served with distinction and honor.  The rest of his staff is out there trying to destroy my professional life, trying to destroy my reputation, because I had the temerity to suggest that a policy issue should be discussed.  What is the role of the war on terror vis-a-vis the war in Iraq?  Did the war in Iraq really hurt the war on terror?  Because I suggest we should have a debate on that, I am now being the victim of a taxpayer-paid–because all these people work for the government– character assassination campaign.

   When Clarke reached in his pocket and pulled out that letter I’m pretty sure Mr. Russert shit in his pants.

   • 

     BooMan on October 15, 2011 at 9:09 pm

     Tim Russert was another softball interviewer, but at least it was his own shtick.  Gregory just copied it and does it in a less confrontational style.  

     • 

       hz on October 16, 2011 at 8:26 pm

       Russert at least knew how to conduct a tough interview, but like almost everyone else at the time, he was very careful to pull his punches with Bush admin figures.

       Or do you suppose Gregory also knows how to dig deep and just chooses not to?

   • 

     BooMan on October 15, 2011 at 9:18 pm

     Memo to Tim Russert: Dick Cheney thinks he controls you.

     This delicious morsel about the “Meet the Press” host and the vice president was part of the extensive dish Cathie Martin served up yesterday when the former Cheney communications director took the stand in the perjury trial of former Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

     Flashed on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq’s nuclear ambitions. Option 1: “MTP-VP,” she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under “pro,” she wrote: “control message.”

     “I suggested we put the vice president on ‘Meet the Press,’ which was a tactic we often used,” Martin testified. “It’s our best format.”

     link

3. 

   seabe on October 15, 2011 at 8:34 pm

   James Falllows:

   I’ve heard angrily from a number of reporters in the last few days. They are objecting to my claims that mainstream journalism is “enabling” Senate dysfunction by describing it as dysfunction plain and simple, rather than as the result of deliberate and extremely effective Republican strategy. That strategy, over the past four-plus years, has been to apply the once-rare threat of a filibuster to virtually everything the Administration proposes. This means that when the Democrats can’t get 60 votes for something, which they almost never can, they can’t get nominations confirmed, bills enacted, or most of what they want done.

   You can consider this strategy brilliant and nation-saving, if you are a Republican. You can consider it destructive and nation-wrecking, if you are a Democrat. You can view it as just what the Founders had in mind, as Justice Scalia asserted recently at an Atlantic forum. You can view it as another step down the road to collapse, since the Democrats would have no reason not to turn the same nihilist approach against the next Republican administration. Obviously I think it does more harm than good. You can even argue that it’s stimulated or justified by various tactics that Democrats have used.

   But you shouldn’t pretend that it doesn’t exist. That was my objection to a recent big Washington Post story on what is wrong with the Senate, which did not contain the word “filibuster.” And there is an example again this very day. I wish to Heaven that the item had appeared somewhere else, but it happens that it’s also in the Post. A story on what happened to Obama’s jobs-bill proposal in the Senate concentrates on the two Plains States Democrats, Ben Nelson and Jon Tester, who defected during the cloture vote–and not on the 100% Republican opposition to even bringing this bill up for consideration.

4. 

   mainsailset on October 16, 2011 at 12:31 am

   Rotten part is that after the interview Gregory will once again be heralded as a tough, king amongst mere mortals, interveiwer.

5. 

   MassCommons on October 16, 2011 at 7:30 am

   It’s too bad because NBC actually employs tough interviewers.  Rachel Maddow, for example.  (Of course the problem with putting someone like Maddow in the “Meet the Press” chair is that within about six months, Republicans and conservatives would stop appearing on the show for fear of embarrassing themselves (some Democrats too).

   • 

     BooMan on October 16, 2011 at 12:41 pm

     And tell me that interview didn’t go exactly as I predicted it would.

6. 

   hz on October 16, 2011 at 8:32 pm

   Cain seems to have worked out an interview strategy of backing down on nothing, making the same ridiculous claim repeatedly, successively louder if necessary, until the interviewer gives up and backs down.  Usually he throws in a claim or two about how the interviewer is trying to victimize him with phony questions or assumptions.  

   I’ve been wondering how well it would work for him if he weren’t running for the highest office in the land, if maybe an interviewer would get exasperated and pull the gloves off.  I guess you have to worry about creating permanent hostilities with someone who might conceivably be president soon–not that I personally find a Cain presidency remotely conceivable.