Brian Williams, Back On The White House Beat For A Day

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams has been liveblogging his interview with President Bush all day. “The President’s office looks like a television studio,” he wrote this morning before his Q&A aboard Air Force One. Then, after Bush’s speech in Philadelphia, he wrote: “I think we broke some new ground on the topic of the underpinnings and current status of the war.” MSNBC.com quickly posted an excerpt from the interview, but we’ll probably have to wait until 6:30 for the good stuff.

This morning, ABC’s Note weighed in on the interview: “May we remind you, Brian, of the First Rule of Interviewing Presidents: don’t ask anything for which the staff has prepared him.” It offered several sample questions, including:

> “Has 2005 been the best year of your presidency? (If not, where would you rank it among the 5?)” > “What is your definition of torture?” > “How much does a liter of Diet Coke cost?”

I suspect that he didn’t ask any of these. Here’s the challenge: Half the nation wants an interviewer to interrogate the president and expose every lie and mistake Bush has ever uttered. But if the interviewer does that, the other half of the nation will call him an anti-American left-wing terrorist sympathizer. The interviewer just wants to make a little bit of news!