Meet the press, with David Letterman

The talk-show host proves to be twice as tough on George W. Bush as many reporters on the campaign trail.

By Jake Tapper

Oct 20, 2000 | When Gov. George W. Bush came to visit Thursday night, David Letterman proved himself to be twice as tough as many of the journalists who've covered Bush this year.

It didn't make for many laughs (neither did the horrendous Top Ten list, by the way), but Letterman asked Bush repeatedly about the death penalty, Texas' abysmal environmental record and foreign affairs. The questions weren't always the most sophisticated, but they were tough and honest and Letterman was persistent yet friendly.

The show began typically enough. James Brown sat in with the band. Letterman gave an OK monologue and hosted a current events quiz. He said that Bush was "nervous" when Vice President Al Gore approached him in the third debate, getting in his space. "He thought Al was gonna kiss him," Letterman said. He showed a video clip of the sign outside the theater that he said the staff had altered to make Bush feel more at home: "The Late Show With David W. Letterman."

The host revealed that he and Bush had made a deal before the show: "I won't bring up his record in Texas as long as he doesn't bring up my record at the Academy Awards."

Introduced to the sounds of "Deep in the Heart of Texas," Bush strode out smiling. Letterman thanked him for coming on, Bush jokingly tapped the microphone, a reference to the time a microphone caught him calling a New York Times reporter "a major league asshole."

Letterman began with a confession. "I don't know if you've known this about me, I don't know if people have told you this, but almost from the beginning, I've been very hard on you."

"Really?" Bush asked, joking.

Letterman said that he had. "I've told jokes about you, I've said unpleasant things, I've just been shooting my mouth off left and right ... Does it bother you that I'm always, you know, yakking about stuff?"

"No, I'm glad you're saying my name," Bush said, smiling and unflappable, as he generally was throughout the interview. The audience applauded for him so hard that at one point Bush joked that "it sounds like you have a lot of my family here."

"Well, anyway, I'm doubly glad that you're here under the circumstances," Letterman said.

The first segment was jokey and pleasant. They talked about the campaign, and Gore, and who they were rooting for in the Mets vs. Yankees Subway Series. (Letterman likes the Yankees; Bush joked that "I like that New York club, I do.")

The segment started edging out a tad -- though everyone was still laughing -- when Letterman said that "the only honest moment of the campaign [was] when you called that guy an asshole. Did you ever feel the need to apologize to him for saying that?"

"Not really," Bush said, to many laughs. "It was inappropriate that people heard me say that," he added.

"He picked on my friend, Dick Cheney," Bush said when asked for an explanation. "He said something about my friend I didn't like. Obviously I didn't know the mike was open."

"I feel good," James Brown sang as they broke to the first commercial.

Bush was humble and pleasant seeming all night. Asked about his performance during the debates, he said, "Well, a lot of folks don't think I can string a sentence together. And so when I was able to do so ... Expectations were so low, all I had to do was say, 'Hi, I'm George W. Bush.'"

Letterman soon switched to a discussion of capital punishment and Bush's record-breaking tenure in the world's most execution-happy state.

"Is there a circumstance you can imagine that might change your view of capital punishment?" The studio grew silent.

"Well, obviously, if the system was unfair," Bush said. "It's a serious business."

"Nothing you can imagine could cause a change of heart here?" Perhaps if the guy was proven not guilty?

Bush said that there were numerous lawyers reviewing the cases, and everyone put to death, he was sure, was guilty of the crime. "In Texas, you can't be put to death unless you committed two capital offenses. And there was a man who committed a murder and a rape and there's a question about rape, and there's some DNA evidence that could have exonerated him. I put the 30-day stay on it so they could analyze the evidence; it turned out he was guilty of both."

"Are the numbers of executions in Texas so far greater than any other state using the death penalty now?" Letterman asked.

"Ahhh, I think that's probably true," Bush said.

"Now is there a reason for that?" Letterman asked.

Bush said that Texas is a death penalty state, while not all states are. "Our prosecutors seek the death penalty and they, there, they seek the death penalty. That's why they have it."

"Now, do you know more about this than I do?" Letterman asked to chuckles. "Because people are certainly opposed to this. The notion of this whole topic just makes me very uncomfortable, very squeamish."

Nonetheless, they kept talking about it. Asked by Bush if he opposed the death penalty, Letterman said no, not necessarily. Bush said it was the law of his state and "my job is to uphold the law, and I do."

Letterman asked if the death penalty had ever been proven to deter crime.

"I think that that's a hard statistic to prove," Bush said. "If I could be convinced it didn't deter crime, you know, I may change my opinion about the death penalty.

"Let's go on to a more pleasant subject, perhaps," Bush suggested.

Next Page: "Don't you have bad air pollution down in Texas?"

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