Starting Tuesday night and split over three days. (Edit: O'Reilly airs on Fox News Channel weeknights at 8pm Eastern time, re-running at 11pm and 4am. Not sure how that varies by time zone.) In one sense it'll be a bit of a fluff piece, but you *will not* see any more challenging questions asked of the president between now and the election. (From what I've seen of the debate format, that's looking pretty tame as well.) He's reportedly trying to get John Kerry in for a similar interview.
Tonight, I think I think it's running tonight. Hell of a teaser. Remember that Bush has surprised O'Reilly before. ______________________ • Romano, Lois and Mike Allen. "Kerry Hits Bush Quote on Carrier". Washington Post, September 27, 2004; page A06. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52627-2004Sep26.html See Also - • Froomkin, Dan. "No Regrets From the President". WashingtonPost.com, September 27, 2004. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53932-2004Sep27
Well, it wasn't entirely pabulum, but neither was O'Reilly "suprised". I don't think he softballed the President, either, but rather chose to let it stand before the viewer. O'Reilly makes much of an issue about how much he thinks of himself, and in the most noble interpretation of what he claims to do, there's not much he could do to "rescue" the president, and one can only hope that people pay more attention to the paucity of Bush's responses than Bill's lack of substantial challenge. For the president's part, it wasn't a disaster. Then again, nothing ever is. I'm not even bothering with the Democratic response.
If I understand it correctly, a second installment will be on tonight, and a third tomorrow. If you missed last night then just read tiassa's post above this one; that's all you need to know, really.
I particularly enjoyed how Bush tip-toed around the new Iran issue. Kudos to O'Reilly for pressing the issue, suprising to me. Although I have to give the president some credit Iran was very recently boasting their missile power just a day before this interview, so perhaps the White House doesn't have a plan of action that is sugared up enough to tell the public about (unfortunate that politics works this way but its on both sides of the fence usually). Here's an excerpt from the interview. Frightening to think what Bush has in store for Iran. Although I would think that Bush wouldn't risk another invasion until Iraq is under control, possibly to use Iraq as a launching post to attack Iran. Most likely Bush will bomb strategic targets in Iran Clinton-style.
I think it's interesting inasmuch as part 2 of the interview showed O'Reilly squirming. Obviously, things weren't going as well as he expected them to. And both of them seemed to confuse each other at one point. But I think last night showed the "surprise" the Washington Post referred to. O'Reilly was clearly knocked off his rhythm by something. But I missed the first minutes of the segment, failed to catch it on the rebroadcast, and am left arguing with myself whether it's worth trying to dig up a transcript. Despite all else, though, we must remember to consider Iran in the context of Pax Americana--Bush is looking for a reason to bomb the snot out of Iran.
An interesting note; I'll just lift it straight from my source, Dan Froomkin's "White House Briefing": The links in the above text reflect those in at WashingtonPost.com. We should note, and this is why Froomkin used the phrase "not exactly right", that the answer is simple: Bush is simply telling the story poorly. From the Telegraph link included in the above citation: It's an easy enough explanation: in all the humdrum Bush has come to tell the story poorly. And in the context of the O'Reilly interview itself, there's not much criticism to be had, except perhaps for infusing melodrama, and extraneity of that brand is especially muddling where fact and emotion come together. And even that's not a big deal. It shouldn't be. The subtlety is lost on most American viewers of The Factor. But apparently Bush keeps repeating the story incorrectly, and nobody on his campaign staff or his executive staff proper is correcting him. I have some respect for the subtlety of it; Rove knows, I'm sure, but probably hasn't explained it to George; it's best if this president doesn't know when he's lying, or so is the case the GOP makes when pleading Bush's case on various war-related miscalculations. But it's only the subtlety I respect. I cannot respect the content of the deception, nor do I respect the purpose or exploitative dimensions. Nonetheless, score one for Bush; let's see if he changes his telling in the near future--as Froomkin at least has called him out on it--or just drops it altogether because he's gotten away with it. Subtle poison slips through my veins, A dark cloud inside of me. It hovers slow til you finally know I'm waiting just to set it free. Whoa! the walls are closing in right on you! What are you gonna do now? The walls are closing in right on you! What did you think I would do now? (Screaming Trees) ______________________ • Froomkin, Dan. "Who's the Biggest Flip-Flopper?" WashingtonPost.com, September 29, 2004. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59585-2004Sep29 • Ghafour, Hamida. "Women working for Afghan election killed by Taliban bomb." Telegraph. June 27, 2004. See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/06/27/wafgh27.xml See Also - • FOXNews.com "Transcript: Bush Talks to O'Reilly". The O'Reilly Factor. September 27, 2004. See http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,133712,00.html Thanks to Saplings for keeping tabs on the 'Trees and providing lyrics.
