CBS This Morning co-host Harry Smith offered a typically sappy and supportive Bill Clinton interview in the 7:30 half hour on Monday. Our Kyle Drennen will have more on that later today. But bias aside, can we just suggest that viewers should expect a news anchor who does his homework? In reporting on Andrew Young's remarks that Clinton is as black as Barack Obama, Smith called him "your UN ambassador," and Clinton had to correct him: he was a UN ambassador for Jimmy Carter.
Then Smith turned to Clinton saying he always opposed the Gulf War. He said "I did a little Googling," and found that all Clinton said was we should let the inspectors do their work. Harry Smith has the resources and the tape library and the high-faluting Tiffany Network traditions of CBS News -- and he's Googling by the seat of his pants at 4 in the morning? He should have found what ABC's Jake Tapper found, and he could it have Googled it from NewsBusters:
BILL CLINTON [File footage from GMA on September 27, 2002]: This guy is-- He's got a very dangerous program. We need to eliminate it.
TAPPER: On his own foundation's website, a 2003 speech where Clinton said, quote, "I supported the President when he asked the Congress for authority to stand up against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." All of this refocuses attention where his wife does not want it, on her 2002 vote to authorize the President to go to war.
There are many reasons CBS is third in the morning. One big, blabby, sloppy reason is Harry Smith.
