I still think the most fundamental problem with Meet the Press is that it is a public salon for Washingtonian insiders to pop off about whatever it is that happens to be obsessing the city’s elites on any given Sunday morning. Sometimes, these obsessions match up quite well with their national audience, but much of the time they do not.
In might be more expensive to pay for the travel, but the show would benefit greatly by letting the host play the role of Washington insider, and letting the guests bring some outside perspective to the issues of the day.
I’d book more local politicians and mayors for the panel section, who will tend to bring a less scripted message. But I’d also bring in more interesting people, whether they are famous or not. Over the years, Bill Moyer has introduced me to many fascinating people who I would never otherwise had known about. A mix of politically engaged celebrities, public intellectuals, quirky citizen organizers, and even the occasional self-interested shill would be more interesting and exciting than one more segment featuring Katty Kay, E.J. Dionne, Bob Woodward, or David Brooks.
And, really, the goal of the program shouldn’t be to simply put on a play where the actors read from a script of conventional wisdom. The goal should be to create a panel that will challenge that conventional wisdom in ways that haven’t been predetermined. For example, the reason that someone like Chuck D might be a good guest to talk about the obsession of the day is because you know he’s smart and well-informed, but you really don’t know what his take on any particular issue is going to be. He wouldn’t be there to advance a poll-tested agenda. The same would be true of countless academics who could be brought on to talk about things that are somewhat outside their field of expertise. Energy Secretary Steven Chu wasn’t an expert in submerged oil wells, but he helped figure out how to cap the Macondo blowout because he’s smart.
Meet the Press is one of the few shows on television where your ratings and influence depend on pleasing a smart audience, which means that stimulating the brain is going to make the show more successful, not less. I wouldn’t advise doing too many segments with the directors of the Congressional Research Service or Office of Management and Budget, but as long as the show doesn’t get bogged down in statistics, it will generally be better television if the level of discussion is high and goes in unpredictable directions.
It’s true that David Gregory wasn’t enough of a political animal to be good at the job, but his real failure was that he continued the program’s tradition of making the second half of the show the equivalent of watching a webcam of an uninteresting Georgetown dinner party. Chuck Todd hasn’t changed that.
This was never compelling television, but it worked passably well as long as Washington still functioned well enough to produce news. When Mitch McConnell ground the gears down to nubs, it killed the old Meet the Press format for good.
