A POST DAILY SHOW POST

So if you were paying attention yesterday (and to the post directly under this one), you watched The Daily Show last night and saw Jon Stewart’s interview with John Kerry. Not that I expected Stewart to become all Chris Matthews on him, but that was really almost too easy. I mean, I know it’s a fake news show, and I know on some level Stewart doesn’t want it to be more than that, but he basically kept asking about Kerry’s opposition, “Don’t you hate it that they say this about you?” Or, “Why do you think they do that?” Now I’ve been a Kerry backer for a long time, actually — even back when all the Dean craziness was ongoing, but he does have a similar personality problem to Al Gore, and he didn’t really help himself tonight. Sure, all of us behind him laugh and giggle at this or that, but if this was an attempt to soften or hip-up his image, did it really do that? He basically spouted a few of his stump speech lines, one of which I’m pretty sure was straight out of his convention speech: “I think the United States of America should never go to war the way this President took us to war. You never go to war because you want to; you go to war because you have to.” Yeah, we know. And I totally agree with your sentiment. But by now, we’ve all heard that line. If you’re trying to show you’re so easy going and in with the in-crowd, step away from the speech and switch around your lingo. Please.

I do give Kerry credit for partaking in one very small but important bit of political spin, however. Kerry made a point to note that Dubya has one every political debate in which he’s participated, beating Ann Richards to become Governor of Texas and then Al Gore in the 2000 elections (even though the argument that Gore lost more than Bush one is a fair one). Bush’s campaign has always done its best to lower expectations for him so that when he shows up and isn’t a complete bumbling idiot, connecting with those Midwestern and southern voters by utilizing his downhome cornpoke plain-speak, he wins. It looks like Kerry and his campaign will definitely do their part in not allowing Bush’s skills to be dismissed in such a way again. It’s a smart move.

Meanwhile, in the comments to yesterday’s post, it was asked if Bush would go on The Daily Show and if the show would take him. I say absolutely to the latter and absolutely not to the former. At the end of the episode, Stewart announced that the next night’s guest, i.e., tonight, would be Ed Gillespie. In case you’re unaware, Gillespie is the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and a major mouthpiece well-versed in spewing talking points. Gillespie’s been making the rounds to get the youth vote — he appeared on MTV’s TRL several months ago when the RNC stuck some sort of voter-recruitment mobile in Times Square. He had an absurdly empty conversation with MTV’s Sway that I’m sure convinced nobody (at least nobody of voting age) of anything. I’m fairly certain that much of his success is because no matter how much bullshit he spews, he’s actually less annoying than the absolutely awful Terry McAuliffe, the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. McAuliffe somehow manages to make things I agree with sound like utter crap, and one major positive of a Kerry win would be that inevitably there would be a new DNC Chair.

Regardless, I think The Daily Show is very smart to let the Republicans come on immediately after Kerry to give their own attempt at being hip, youthful and pretend like there’s no such thing as spin. I do look forward, however, to watching Stewart hopefully make Gillespie slightly uncomfortable, forcing him to just laugh incessently because he doesn’t have any actually good answers to provide. I’m sure that if you’ve seen any number of talking head shows on the cable news channels this week, Gillespie has been on at least one of them, and you won’t hear anything different on The Daily Show. He’ll just have a bigger smile on his face and guffaw popping from his belly. Still, I’m sure it will be damn good television.