Yesterday, the Secretary of the Treasury, whom I shall not stoop to dubbing Tim "the Tax Cheat" Geithner, made his inaugural appearance on both "This Week" and "Meet the Press." I ought to watch both interviews, but I have not yet been able to bring myself to devote the collective hour to do so. (I haven't erased them from my DVR yet, though, so there is still hope.)
I wonder how many feel as I do. I do not trust this man, even though he has now been on the job for over 2 months. And at its root, my lack of trust is not because of his lousy budget. It is because of his failure to pay his own personal taxes until forced to do so because of pending confirmation hearings for the job of, among other things, overseeing the IRS. (And yes, I refuse to name call over this issue.) Not that there isn't anything wrong with a budget that essentially is all about spend, spend, spend and when that fails, bathe the nation in red ink.
George Stephanopolous, hardly a bastion of conservatism, seemed to find it just about as newsworthy that uber-liberal, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman (see, I can name call on occasion) was opposed to the budget as that Tim Geithner was there. I could tell as I fast forwarded to the interview to the roundtable discussion segment that he had asked Geithner about Krugman's comments (among other things, Krugman compared the budget to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic). Stephanopolous also included Krugman in the roundtable this week, where Krugman predicted at least 600,000 more jobs lost and that at best, things will just get worse more slowly. With friends like that, you could say that the White House desperately needs MSNBC.
Speaking of the "This Week" roundtable, I fast forward through the Stephanopolous interview(s) at the top about half the time to get to the roundtable segment. "This Week" is always my favorite roundtable because of the presence of the incomparable George Will, but Stephanopolous is a worse interviewer than either David Gregory or Bob Schieffer and can't hold a candle to Chris Wallace. Wallace is one of the best interviewers on TV right now and just about the only one willing to be an equal opportunity griller in the mold of Tim Russert, whom I still miss terribly. And the roundtable on Fox News Sunday is always top-notch (Brit Hume, Bill Kristol, Mara Liasson and Juan Williams), so that makes FNS the all-around best show. So you got my Sunday show opinion along with my thoughts on the Treasury Secretary. Is there a better way to start off your week?
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