Sick Transit

I just watched Diane Sawyer’s interview with Howard and Judy Dean. (Note: the link transcript has some parts that were cut from the broadcast version.)

Unsurprisingly, Sawyer spent several minutes on Dean’s Iowa speech, and I thought he did a great job of handling that. He acknowledged that it was over the top, and wasn’t Presidential, but he also pointed out that he was talking to 3500 disappointed young people, and had a responsibility to make them feel good. He looked self-assured and comfortable in his own skin, even when Sawyer kept asking questions about his temper.

The next segment of the interview was focused on Judy Dean, and I really think this was a low point for Sawyer. She kept interrogating them about Judy’s non-participation in the campaign. You’d think that as a career woman, Sawyer would understand! Finally, Dean stepped up and turned the tables:

Again, though, they both handled the interrogation very well. Judy is definitely shy… there were several times when she mumbled and it wasn’t clear what she was saying. She has a very expressive face, however, and it was clear that she couldn’t lie. The Deans actually make a very cute couple.

Towards the end, Sawyer finally started touching on substantial issues–middle-class taxes and Saddam Hussein–and Dean was actually a lot weaker there than on the personal questions; he stuttered and stumbled around before he could find an answer. On taxes, he conspicuously failed to deny that he was going to propose a middle-class tax cut; he just said that his aides shouldn’t have been talking about it. On Hussein, he floundered a bit before he could finally get to a stock answer about 500 casualties in Iraq and fighter planes escorting commercial flights. If Sawyer had pressed him half as hard as she did on the personal questions, he would have been toast.

All in all, however, I think that most of the interview showed Dean really comfortable with himself, and the Deans very comfortable as a couple, and I think that the net effect will be good.