Honestly, I think this interview could have gone much better than it did. Both seemed quite uncomfortable for most of it. Blair because he understood this wasn’t just a mere comedy show prepared for the worst. Stewart because he tried to tow the line between hard hitting and uber-respectful ultimately failing at both.
The real problem was that Stewart spent the VAST majority of his interview talking about the Iraq war and trying to set Blair up for some sort of gotcha moment. I think Stewart believed that because Blair was the Ex-Prime Minister he’d be willing to come on the show free of all political encumberances and just bare his soul. It didn’t happen.
There were so many other great topics to discuss and he wasted all the time he had. Oh well.
It was off and oddly strained. I was shocked at Tony Blair’s appearance–that man has been through hell and back and it shows. Blair seemed strained and ill at ease. And Stewart seemed to be looking for something and not finding it. Also, so much has happened just in the past month that rehashing the decision to go into Iraq and WMDs and Saddam etc, seemed stale and pointless.
Not Jon’s finest hour. A decent premise, but it clanged.
I was also disappointed. I did like Blair’s honest answer when asked about his relationship with Bush, but otherwise he seemed like a guy who just did not want to be there, and Stewart generally seemed unable to get any sort of flow going with him.
It didn’t help that they kept interrupting each other. Blair started to answer the question that he thought Jon was leading up to, but that wasn’t the question Jon asked. They talked over each other and got each other confused. It was all downhill from there.
I actually thought that Blair did great, and I went into the interview wanting to dislike him. To me, it seemed like he totally got TDS, he understood it’s a comedy show, but he’d be asked some tough questions. I found him as honest as he could be.