Am I glad I missed all of this. I guess I should have chimed in yesterday. But while the entire world was watching MTP on NBC I was on CNN. Even the folks in the CNN greenroom were watching Meet the Press. Anyway, I caught about four-fifths of the interview. My own personal reaction was that Bush did better than I thought he would insofar as I had read extended excerpts from the transcript in advance and they came across as lifeless and inarticulate at times. So, when I watched him he seemed much better. I thought he conveyed his ideas and his convictions pretty well — for him. There’s no escaping the fact that George W. Bush is not a great extemporaneous speaker (some of his formal speeches, however, are outstanding) and pretending otherwise only makes conservatives seem intellectually dishonest. The question remains whether he is an effective speaker and that’s a tougher question. He’s certainly effective at infuriating his opponents, which can be good. And I think he’s effective at communicating where his heart lies — often because he uses such un-ironic expressions as “in my heart…” But, it must be said, that when a Tony Blair (or Dick Cheney) style refutation is in order, Bush is severely wanting.

As for the exchange between John Podhoretz and the gang, I guess I come down in the middle. Candidate Bush said all sorts of things. Certainly his “compassionate conservative” treacle was a clear indication that he was going to be feeling a lot of folks’ pain a la Bill Clinton. He also claimed to be a “reformer with results” and while he can certainly argue that he’s been one, I’m not sure he can claim the results have been what conservatives want.