My Take on MTP

Here’s my take, prior to looking at other blogs: Bush did really, really, well. Most importantly, he sounded knowledgeable (which may fuel suspicions about vetting of questions.) Russert almost never interrupted or contradicted him, and I even caught him nodding in agreement a few times, which surely helped create this impression. This is only a statement about form.

On the substance side, his answers contained varying amounts of truth, spin, distortion, and inaccuracy (viz., his budget statement that Kash easily refuted). Another example was Bush’s invocation of his pre-war use of the phrase “grave and gathering” to demonstrate that he and his administration never said the threat was imminent, while ignoring (as did Russert) a whole host of other statements that the threat was, in fact, imminent.

So in a battle between form and substance, which one wins? My guess is form. Expect Bush to get a bounce from this. Now I’m off to read some other blogs, where I’ll hopefully see something that changes my mind. (One possibility, as Kash points out, is that the release of military records could be a big deal, if there’s anything there. Still, this seems unlikely since, if there were anything there, why release them?)

Transcript here.

AB