zabbo

Last weekend’s Meet the Press was another one worth catching. I enjoyed watching the triumvirate from the Times — Maureen Dowd, Tom Friedman, and Bill Safire — play off each other.

MS. DOWD: Well, I think that the whole point of the trip was to reach out. But you know, it’s hard to have a charm offensive when your message basically is we were right, we ignored you, we blew off everything that was important to you and now we’re going to allow you to help bail us out of Iraq. So it’s a tough message.

MR. RUSSERT: You’re nodding your head.

MR. SAFIRE: I’m still thinking of what Tom said about…

And in particular, Tom Friedman was in pretty good form.

MR. FRIEDMAN:…. Democrats need to be in there. Joe Biden, who was here, gave a lot of good advice during the last two years to Rumsfeld that was ignored–OK?–about troop levels. And I believe that Democrats should be not only participating in this with their enthusiasm but with their ideas, and embracing it and trying to shape it. This is the biggest democratization project in the world going, and one that is fundamental to our national interests. The idea that the Democrats would just sulk on the side and basically put them in a situation where they only succeed if the country fails–that, to me, is as dumb as the day is long.

Sometimes, when I’m all alone, I like to pretend that this kind of programming is popular in the US.