I have not watched "Meet the Press" much since Tim Russert's untimely death last year. I did see the show that Tom Brokaw hosted when Colin Powell announced his support for Barack Obama, last October sometime. Other than that, Fox News Sunday and ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopolous" have rounded out my Sunday show repertoire.
But I happened to catch John McCain's appearance in its entirety today. Not so surprisingly, I suppose, many of the questions, perhaps half, were about Sarah Palin's resignation. (By the way, have you noticed that Palin's decision to call it quits completely kicked Mark Sanford out of the headlines?)
Senator McCain, in no uncertain terms, made two things crystal clear. First, he defended Palin's move to step down as Governor of Alaska. The body language, as well as his actual verbiage, held nothing back from a resolute defense of what she had decided to do. Also, he reiterated that Palin is absolutely qualified to serve as the President of the United States by virtue of her existing political acumen, her experience as Mayor and Governor and her correct stances on the issues of the day.
John McCain is not my ideal politician, to say the least. I have, however, felt that he has gotten a bad rap from Glenn Beck (whom I highly admire and enjoy) and others who have implied that McCain has held back, at best, from dissuading his former aides, as well as the media, from piling on Palin ever since the campaign ended. This is not terribly fair; McCain seems to have moved on since the fighting days of 2008 and pretty much gone back to the business of being a Senator. One presumes that making a call to an erstwhile 2008 campaign assistant to ask him/her to lay off of laying into Palin is not at the top of McCain's to-do list, for starters. Additionally, having moved on, it probably just doesn't occur to him that often. And in the end, Palin will have to defend herself from her detractors, rather than waiting for her former benefactor to come to her aid. So believing the above to be true, I think John McCain was more than generous today in his defense of his 2008 running mate. I'll go further and say he showed himself a true gentleman.
On an ancillary note...David Gregory is developing some chops as MTP host. In spite of my initial instincts, I was impressed today. His questions to both McCain and Senator Chuck Schumer were tough, but even-handed and fair. He'll never be Russert, but if he can project a lack of bias by equal scrappiness with all comers, David Gregory could bump up the ratings of a network that is suffering from accusations of extreme leftism.
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