Scott And George Go To Camp David
"I thought it was a reasonably tough interview by Scott Pelley. What you have to understand is that no matter how probing the questions are -- and I've watched Bush be interviewed by everyone from Tim Russert to Oprah -- a disciplined politician can limit himself to saying exactly what he wants to say and no more. So I don't think the 60 Minutes segment broke much new ground, except perhaps to show Bush being rather dismissive toward the notion that Congress could cut off funding for the war."
For what it's worth, I thought both Pelley and Bush were pretty good. Pelley was fair but didn't shy away from pressing the president, and Bush appeared straightforward and largely stayed on message. (Not that the right and left didn't have their quibbles.) It's worth noting that the president continues to reach out to organizations like CBS News, the network, of course, responsible for "memogate" and one of the principal players in a mainstream media that many conservatives have dismissed as biased and unfair.
Not that Bush has much of a choice: His "surge" plan has not exactly been universally praised, and he needs to build up support. The president was pretty candid on Sunday about his reasons for talking to "60 Minutes." At the end of the interview, Pelley asked how Bush can "escalate the war when so many people in this country seem to be against it," and the president responded with this: "I'm gonna have to keep explaining. That's why I'm doing this interview with you."
The right can't believe that Bush continues to reach out to people via CBS News – Rush Limbaugh is "mystified why the president would appear on this…[e]specially after every effort that CBS has made to destroy this man's presidency " – but the simple truth is that Rush's listeners are not the ones Bush has to win over. As we noted last week, the White House has tried to keep the president's take on the "surge" in the news as long as possible, an effort that will culminate in the upcoming State Of The Union speech. Even if Bush views the press corps as hostile – and I think it's fairly safe to assume that he does – he still feels he can take advantage of it.