As some partisans (see Newsweek’s Anna Quindlen) bizarrely (or perhaps just cynically) suggest that Bush gets a “free pass,” the morning shows today in the first interview segment are as follows:

NBC: Howard Dean

CBS: Howard Dean

ABC: George Stephanopoulos

Even these men are too conservative, apparently. Katie Couric was hitting Dean from the left, asking if he had favored Medicare “cuts” like the growth reduction favored by Newt in ‘95.

For his part, Smarmanopoulos is never harder to take than when he’s insisting to Charlie Gibson that no, this Wilson thing is a real scandal at the White House, when you can recall how he made a living for five years suggesting that absolutely nothing was a real scandal and every question about Clinton was politically motivated hack work. Gibson began the show saying Washington was going into “scandal overdrive.”