Tim Russert’s interview with Rudy Giuliani on “Meet the Press” is a perfect reflection of the scandal-driven priorities of the Washington press corps. Guiliani is a top presidential candidate with little knowledge of or experience in foreign policy. Norman Podhoretz, one of his advisers, wants to bomb Iran and thinks Iraq’s WMD are in Syria. But what does Russert really care about? We’ll let the word count tell the story.

Horse race – 701 words
Iran – 1401 words
Iraq – 539 words
Questionable actions/statements/ethical allegations – 6129 words
Huckabee on homosexuality – 249 words
Balanced budget pledge and fuel efficiency standards – 328 words

Or, in USA Today style, here are Tim Russert’s real priorities:

Now, there are certainly serious ethical questions about Guiliani. But these pale in comparison to questions about how he would conduct himself in office, particularly when it comes to foreign policy. Unfortunately, however, Russert wants to break news and the way to do that is to force Giuliani to go on the record about skeletons in his closet.

Update 5:41 PM: I should explicitly clarify that Russert did ask Giuliani two questions about Podhoretz as part of the 1401 words of Iran discussion. However, as I argue above, Russert devoted far more of his program to ethics and honesty issues that are far less important for the country as a whole.