Bush scores!

Teh Red Sea parted and teh heavens opened, and our president got a positive notice from Matthew Yglesias, writing from his new digs:

Call me crazy, but I think Bob Costas’s interview of George W. Bush has been way more enlightening and substantive than what you typically see when people interview politicians. No horse race stuff, no goofy gotchas — just serious questions about the US-China relationship and the conflict in Georgia along with, of course, some stuff about sports thrown in. If you could see that kind of attitude brought to Meet The Press, I think it’d be a good thing.

What’s more, to his credit faced with serious questions Bush mostly gave serious, reasonably impressive answers (UPDATE: Of course there was the “I don’t see America having problems” moment, but still…) .

One of the commenters was pretty impressed, too:

Maybe it’s because he was talking to a sportscaster and, in part, about sports, but I think a big part of the success of the interview (on both sides) was that Bush actually seemed both to know what he was talking about, and care about it. He wasn’t saying anything totally remarkable about US-China relations, but he was also very much not taking the neocon Great Powers Conflict line on China. Which is of course exactly what McCain is doing.

Overall, just kind of bizarre in that Bush wasn’t totally embarrassing or terrifying. And kudos to Costas for an excellent job.

Whoa!

I guess I’d better rewind the TiVo and watch that interview.