Gregory was so weak, he failed to even stop and gaze at Romney's apparent new policy on keeping parts of Obamacare--which others in the media IDed immediately, and the Romney camp since has walked back, then walked back the walk back. But to Gregory it was just another How-de-do.
The NBC host also failed to say a word after Romney hailed Bill Clinton's speech--such as, "Mr. Romney, you do realize that he skewered you throughout that speech--why do you now say he elevated' the convention"? Gregory even declared, in his own voice, that we've had a "jobless" recovery. And he let Romney boast about balancing four budgets in Massachusetts--when he had no choice, it's set by law.
We got an Eastwood question and: "As a candidate now when was the last time you really got to spend some--some quality time with somebody who is out of work and what did you get from them?" What were the odds he was going to say anything that would provide even ten seconds of illumination? Bat, meet softball.
There's so much more. Even allowing Ann Romney to sit in--what's the point of that? The soapy questions about his Mormon faith, such as: "Mrs. Romney, do you think that-- that Mormons in America and around the world, for that matter, have gotten past a level of persecution that they can very openly be-- be proud of what the two of you are doing?" After a completely misleading statement on the GM bankruptcy Gregory went straight to: "What's the Romney-Ryan bumper sticker?"
Well, I'll just leave other points to the smackdown from Charles P. Pierce.
1 comment:
The network execs and David Gregory know perfectly well what an embarrassment his style of interviewing is, but are loathe to change it out of fear that follow-up questions would discourage the big name politicians from appearing on the show.
Rachel Maddow made that mistake (good on her!) and is now reduced to begging for people to be interviewed.
You may also recall that Gregory refused to have fact-checkers audit his show in real-time like PolitiFact did for ABC's This Week with Christiane Amanpour.
And finally, your mention of Russert reminded me about his policy of keeping everything politicians told him off-the-record unless they expressly told him to publicize their comments.
Worked wonders for his career, didn't it?
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