Wednesday, September 29, 2004

O'Reilly's Bush Interview, Pt. 2

Unfortunately, due to an unexpectedly late office boating party, I missed the second part of the three part interview. Too beat to wait up for the re-run, I will have to try to find a transcript or online video of the interview in order to comment. I don't foresee any reason why I should miss tonight's final interview, so hopefully I will come out of this batting .667.

UPDATE: I have now reviewed the second part of the O'Reilly interview with Bush, and I think the result was slightly better than the first portion of the interview. While the substance of Bush's answers was slightly leaner than on Monday, I believe that he became more relaxed and comfortable as the interview progressed. As we have seen before, this is a president who has a sense of humour and is not embarrased to show it.

His comments on the growth of government spending left something to be desired. I was disappointed that he passed the buck on to Congress as far as controlling spending. It would have been nice to hear him pledge to send a leaner budget to Congress, but I understand that he wants to be free to increase spending as necessary for the ongoing war effort. Bush's answers regarding health care, while less than satisfactory for me, will probably go over well with undecided and independent voters. He did work in a plug for private health savings accounts, so there was some consolation for the conservative base.

I think Bush quite emphatically and effectively put the National Guard question to bed once and for all. This story will get no further traction as a means of damaging Bush. His comments on media bias, while subtle, should probably ring true with most people.

Overall, I think that this second portion of the interview built quite nicely on the first. I would grade it as an A-.