Good Old Mike

Good old Mike Wallace hasn't lost his punch. In a December 8 interview with the Boston Globe's Suzanne Ryan, he jumped the shark on her first question:

Q. President George W. Bush has declined to be interviewed by you. What would you ask him if you had the chance?

A. What in the world prepared you to be the commander in chief of the largest superpower in the world? In your background, Mr. President, you apparently were incurious. You didn't want to travel. You knew very little about the military. . . . The governor of Texas doesn't have the kind of power that some governors have. . . . Why do you think they nominated you? . . . Do you think that has anything to do with the fact that the country is so [expletive] up?

Yup. It's not George Bush's fault. He's not the cause of our problems, he's a symptom, like Las Vegas, Wal-Mart, and a war machine that's compelled to run an unjustified foreign invasion every 35 years or so (supposedly motivated by the need to spread "freedom" and "democracy").

The problem is not that George W. Bush is blanked up. We're blanked up. The rest of the world knows it, even if we don't.

At 87, Wallace is still conspicuously unsenile. Elsewhere in the interview, he says "There's no such thing as an indiscreet question."

And please don't ask me, "Why do you hate America?" I just told you.