Today is one of those days that you really want to get out your sandwich boards and protest outside ABC News over on DeSales Street in DC. George Stephanopoulos really acted like a Clintonoid today with the way he handled his old boss Co-President Hillary. First, he peppered Gov. Pataki with four or five questions directly from Hillary’s interview. (In this case, wouldn’t it have made more sense to put Hillary’s interview first on the show??) Pataki at least had a nice answer to Hillary calling this a “Potemkin convention” of moderates. He said, what as compared to Democrats in Boston pretending to be strong on defense?

Then, George gave Hillary long, respectful space for 60, 90, or 120 second answers? The only time he interrupted: when she was lukewarm on the idea of getting Donald Rumsfeld to resign. (She made some tactical sense by saying Democrats should want them all fired.) She went on long tirades about how the ads were a “smear,” and George never once strayed into asking about particular charges. Where is it a smear? Apparently, that goes without questioning.

The one decent question Mr. Sucking-up-to-us had for Hillary was a poll of 9-11 familes showing many blamed the Clintons for failures leading up to 9-11. But he made no attempt to interrupt her long answer, or question her as she said the Bush people were incompetent. Excuse me, Mrs. Clinton, explain why firing missiles into Afghanistan after the Lewinsky testimony (and into the pharmaceutical complex at al-Shifa in Sudan) was a competent salvo on the War on Al-Qaeda.