Interview with George Stephanopoulos

Mitt and Ann did a great job on the interview this morning. Here are my thoughts:

Steph was really going at the Mormon thing pretty hard. Did it ever cross his mind that delving into such detail not only reveals little about Mitt's capabilities as our next president, but it is also in poor taste. I can't imagine Joe Lieberman being questioned for 1/3 of a long interview about Judaism. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying religious questions should be off limits, I'm just saying that Mitt has sufficiently addressed his religion in the past and that it shouldn't be the main topic of a political talk show interview. If I were interviewing someone of another faith, I would feel awkward trying to "corner" them on specific (again, inconsequential) doctrines and practices. That being said, I do hope that Mitt gives a JFK-like address to a faith-based group so that he can move on to more pertinent issues.

As Mitt and I have both said before, if someone would like additional information on the church, they should contact the church. He is not a church spokesman and not the definitive source for doctrine, history, and teachings of the church.

Another interesting thing I noticed was how silly Steph looked by attempting to trap Mitt with information on his voting for Tsongas in '92. Anyone knows that really hard-core political junkies register independent so they have the option of voting for a weak candidate in the opposing party. This is exactly what Mitt did. Had more folks done this, '92 would have been Bush I vs. Tsongas, and Bush I may have had better chances than he did with Clinton.

Finally, with all the detailed research Steph and all the ABC folks put into Mitt's life, it would have been REALLY tough to miss out on the fact that Mitt has a Harvard MBA (which Steph mentioned more than once) AND a Harvard Law degree. A law degree normally takes 3 years and generally requires even higher undergraduate academic credentials than an MBA, which takes 2 years. Mitt was admitted into a special joint degree at Harvard that allowed him to earn BOTH degrees in just 4 years.

Why was Mitt's law degree left out? Was it an honest oversight or did the ABC folks purposely not mention it? Is the law degree considered more prestigious? And if so, perhaps it would be better to "forget" to mention the law degree than the MBA. (Assuming, of course, that not mentioning either would be a bit ridiculous.)

Anyway, looking back at the entire interview, Mitt and Ann did a wonderful job. They came off as the good, smart, charismatic, and genuine people they are - despite an attempted grilling by the Bill Clinton's former right-hand man.