Meet the Press Review

Host: Tom Brokaw
Guests: Caroline Kennedy (segment one)
Nancy Pelosi (segment two)
Political Roundtable: Chuck Todd, Gwen Ifill, John Meacham

Recap: I'm not really sure what happened during the Kennedy segment as I dozed off after a sentence or two. I half-remember Brokaw asking her a bunch of stock questions about being Obama's "chief VP vetter" and her providing a bunch of stock answers about having performed that service. She likes Obama a lot. Brokaw, not as much.

Pelosi wasn't much better, though the energy policy questioning line was a little better. Why don't more liberals say that releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is stupid (which Pelosi was heartily advocating)? I hate to anoint myself arbiter of the blatantly obvious, but it's not meant to artificially and temporarily lower the price of oil -- it's supposed to be an emergency option in the event of disruption in supply. Trust me, you'd feel pretty stupid if you released it as a campaign parlor trick and had a violet regime change in Saudi Arabia the next day, or a massive hurricane that destroyed refining capacity on U.S. coasts.

And, maybe I'm just hallucinating, but hasn't the price of gas dropped quite a bit the last month or so (certainly a far greater reduction than releasing the SPR would cause)? I've also read reports that Americans are driving moderately less too. I'll have to get an environmental expert on the line, but I have the sneaking suspicion that subsidizing the price of oil is not the answer.

Turning back to MTP...I don't even know what the utility of having Kennedy and Pelosi as guests would be. I know the DNC convention starts tomorrow, but these people had nothing to say. Do you need to waste 15 minutes on the most consequential political show in the country to have the person that helped select Joe Biden tell you that Joe Biden kicks ass? I think not. And Pelosi? Congress is in recess, and won't be doing a damned thing until next year, so unless you have something particularly poignant to ask her, (and believe me Tom Brokaw sure as hell didn't) why have her on?

The political roundtable wasn't very interesting, and that won't change until somebody besides me catches a glimpse of the giant pitchfork jutting out of Tom Brokaw's back. Chuck Todd had some interesting things to say about the demographic trends of the as-yet undecided voter. Despite making fun of him from time to time, I like the quantitative meta view he takes of politics. I'm convinced he'd make a good MTP host, and am willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen. Could we start a petition or campaign? I'm open to suggestions. Anything to make the Brokaw and Gregory go away.

I've said it before, but I wasn't a big fan of the late Tim Russert's over the top "gotcha" style interviews, and I always felt like he let people off the hook when one or two more obvious follow-up questions begged to be asked. Boy, do I miss him now. At the very least he was smart and not just happy to be there (though he surely was that). Brokaw and Gregory don't have any real interview style at all, and can't facilitate conversations to boot.

Until next week...