By his own singularly woeful standard for political acumen, President Bush’s Sunday night interview with NBC sportscaster-in-chief Bob Costas could have been a lot worse. Though he uttered typically myopic nuggets of optimistic tripe without any trace of irony (“I don’t see America having problems”), the Olympics may be the one stage of world affairs where ham-fisted optimism is a forgivable sin. What emerges more from this compelling video is the “enlightening and substantive” probing of Costas’ questions, his commitment to a standard of journalistic integrity disturbingly absent from the work of many of his colleagues on the mainstream media’s political beat. As Jason Linkins aptly put it in The Huffington Post, Costas demonstrates “that there’s a world of difference between a reporter with chops, knowledge, and genuine curiosity and those who work for the empty calories of a “gotcha” moment”.

–Will Di Novi

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