Does Harry Smith Want President Bush to Fail?

Harry Smith was at it again on CBS’s "The Early Show" this morning. He had two segments of note today. In the first notable segment, during the 7:00 half hour, he interviewed former Bush Administration aide Mary Matalin about the staff shakeups at the White House. And in the 8:30 half hour, he interviewed Jane Fonda about her memoirs, My Life So Far, which are being released in paperback.

In his interview with Mary Matalin, Smith wasted no time in getting to the bias. His first question to her was:

"What does it mean to the Republican faithful, these changes? What does it mean to these people who want to see the President succeed?"

Is he implying only faithful Republicans want to see the President succeed? Does that mean everyone else, including the CBS crowd, wants the President to fail. Wouldn’t success in Iraq, the war on terrorism, economic growth, etc. be beneficial to all Americans? Regardless of political affiliation, for the good of the country, every American should want to see the President succeed.

Later, in his interview with Jane Fonda, Mr. Smith was sympathetic to Ms. Fonda for her role in Vietnam, claiming he thinks she is seeking forgiveness, and he sounded shocked when he reported that there are people who won’t forgive her.

"...The pictures were published of you on the anti-aircraft gun. You said if there's anything I could do in my whole life over again it would be not to do that. To me I'm sensing you're looking for some sort of forgiveness, some sort of something, and there's still a lot of people in this country who will not forgive you for that."

Given the fact that there are many Vietnam Veterans who have not forgiven Fonda and view her as a traitor to America, Smith shouldn’t have acted so surprised when he asked the following:

"Yeah. Because didn't somebody actually come up to you and spit in your face at a book signing?"

I’m not saying spitting on another person is appropriate, just that Smith shouldn’t have been surprised that it happened. When people nurse a wound for close to 40 years, they don’t soon forget the cause. Yet Harry Smith could only see it as an issue of Fonda's victimhood, and not from the perspective of veterans.