Hotline After Dark -- The No Spin Zone?

FNC's O'Reilly interviewed Pres. Bush. The interview will air over three nights, beginning last night:

O'Reilly: "This is my third interview with the president. He does get a fair shake here but he also gets tough questions, as everybody does. Now interviewing a president is not like interviewing anyone else on the planet. You cannot be confrontational with the president of the United States. You can be direct, but you can't be disrespectful."

Bush, asked why so many Americans are against the war: "Because they want us to win. They are wondering whether or not we have the plans in place to win. They want to know whether or not we have the flexibility on the ground to constantly meet the enemy. And I can understand why there's frustration, because the enemy knows that killing innocent people will create a sense of frustration and they know that they know America. They know we are a conscience-driven people that value life. And the more people they destroy and the more innocent lives that are destroyed, the more likely it is we will retreat in their way of thinking. This is what Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri had plainly stated, that it is just a matter of time that America loses her nerve and leaves."

More: "It is conceivable that within decades, the Middle East will be a place where moderate governments have been toppled, extremists and radicals will have gained control of oil resources and then will use to create a blackmail situation against the West and Iran will have a nuclear weapon, to complicate the mix. And 20 or 30 years from now if that is the case, people will say what happened to them, how come you couldn't see the threat as a generation of Americans are dealing with something much more violent than we are seeing today. And so to the critics who say we don't listen, of course we listen. I listen to the most important people of all, the people on the ground who are actually in Baghdad making the difficult decisions necessary to help this government succeed."

On why the U.S. doesn't talk to North Korea: "We tried that and didn't work." More: "What I'm saying is there was kind of a good faith effort made to engage North Korea and try to convince them in a bilateral way to give up their weapons programs. There was an agreement made and they didn't honor the agreement. And so I decided since that didn't work, we ought to try another way forward in order to solve this problem peacefully and this is to have China at the table and South Korea at the table and Japan at the table and Russia at the table. My attitude is real simple on this. More voices saying the same thing to North Korea makes it more likely that we will be able to solve this issue peacefully" (FNC, 10/16).

And with the election less than a month away, several pundits were prognosticating. Here's a sampling:

Washington Post's VandeHei: "Republicans are looking at the landscape, and they're basically pulling back from investing in trying to defeat Democrats" ("NewsHour," PBS, 10/16).

New York Times' Nagourney: "One thing you need to watch is a lot of these races right now, House races, Democrats are ahead by one or two points. If it remains at one or two points, the turnout operation, which Republicans correctly boast about -- I think it really is really good -- can make the difference of pulling Republicans back. But if they keep widening, and some of these races are -- they seem to be widening -- then Democrats are going to be in very strong positions" ("NewsHour," PBS, 10/16).

Rothenberg Report's Rothenberg: "The buzz about the story that the RNC is effectively writing off Ohio seems to be wrong. In fact, the Republican National Committee has a $1 million TV buy beginning very shortly in the state. They are pumping more than a million dollars to their effort to save Mike DeWine" ("Situation Room," CNN, 10/16).

Time's Klein, on Obama: "He's as good as anybody I've seen since Clinton" ("Tucker," MSNBC, 10/16).

Ex-Sec/State James Baker, asked if he expects Bush to "annoint" the GOPer in '08: "No, I really don't" ("Hardball," MSNBC, 10/16).

Elizabeth Edwards, on a possible Edwards '08 run: "He is fighting the fight that he thinks he needs to fight, and he is also going to places because he is, in fact, seriously considering it" ("Hardball," MSNBC, 10/16).{EMILY GOODIN]