The Sunday showdown that wasn't
Remarkably little buzz seems to have been generated out of the dueling "gets" Sunday morning, Barack Obama appearing on "Meet the Press" and Hillary Clinton on "This Week." In fact, it's possible that when all's said and done, more press will have been generated from the two candidates' separate turns reading Indiana native David Letterman's "Top Ten List" (Clinton goes tonight).
This morning's edition of the pro-Obama Huffington Post features stories about the Burmese cyclone and poll numbers from Indiana and N.C., but no mention, at least on its front page, of either interview. Gone is the outpouring of righteous anger that followed the ABC debate with its "shoddy, despicable" questions (thank you Tom Shales). And the New York Times, which earlier this weekend had promised a sort of middle-aged clash of media titans between Russert and Steph, also led Monday's issue with poll results, including the finding that the Jeremiah Wright "issue" was having little impact on voters, which of course explains Russert's decision to spend 15 minutes hammering Obama on it.
Buttonholing candidates over nonissues is a Russert specialty. Almost nobody remembers now, but in July of 2000, he spent a huge chunk of his "Meet the Press" interview with candidate Al Gore beating him up over questions about the Buddhist temple fundraising, his use of "barnyard epithets" and other "issues." (Let Daily Howler take you wayback.) Interestingly, during that interview Russert played a tape of a question asked by a voter in Michigan that first appeared in a New York Times story: "You've been vice president for eight years. Where have you been all this time?" So you see, ABC was just taking a page out of the NBC playbook in this year's Pennsylvania debate when it trotted out the same gal whose comment about Obama's missing flag pin had made the Times. Are network news organizations so strapped for manpower that they can't find a second person in America to corroborate something they read in the papers?
When Russert doesn't buttonhole, he's just another suit with a microphone. Thus, when he and Brian Williams co-moderated the Feb. 26 debate in Cleveland -- back in those halcyon days before hardly anyone besides Obama and Oprah had heard of Jeremiah Wright -- the NBC anchor tried to get the Dems to set a deadline for withdrawing, not from Iraq, but a trade deal. "You are willing to opt out of NAFTA in six months?" he asked, over and over. But at least that was a policy question. The way he kept pushing, almost needling Obama about his alliance with a racially divisive figure was so over-the-top that after a while, I started to wonder how Russert would stand up to a bout of persistent questioning about HIS association with a racially divisive figure.
Meanwhile, over at ABC Stephanopoulos at least had the sense to open with a gas-tax question. And then he had the even better sense to stop asking questions and let the audience have at candidate Clinton. That made for some unintendedly amusing choreography, as Clinton rose up out of her Queen Anne chair to answer the audience member and never sat down again, forcing George to rise up out of his Queen Anne chair and turn the two seats into useless props for the hour.
And in an unusual show of pluck, a producer managed to get something Obama had just said on "Meet the Press" into Stephanopoulos' hands, so he could get a reaction from Clinton on his show. Proof that someone was taking this Sunday morning showdown seriously.
AUDIO: Paul Harris and I further discussed this in today's podcast. Also up is my chat this morning with Chip Franklin on KOGO in San Diego.
• HarrisOnline.com - TV Barn - 5/5/2008
• KOGO-AM - TV Barn - 5/5/2008
IN PRINT: Speaking of TV shows that were supposed to generate a lot of buzz, here's my review of "Gossip Girl" on CW which followed up on my blog posting on "GG" last week. Plus, my picks to click.
RELATED: New bio reports Clinton tried to kill ABC's "Path to 9/11"
