Jeff Greenfield Should Know Better Than This

Jeff Greenfield and the I-Man had a Hallmark moment this morning in discussing their mutual affection for Rick Kaplan, the executive producer of the CBS Evening News, for whom Greenfield has worked at three different television networks.

"When he's on and everybody's up, he's a great producer," said Greenfield, a senior political correspondent for CBS News. "He doesn't like mediocrity."

Then it is probably upsetting for Kaplan that CBS's broadcast, anchored by Katie Couric, consistently places third among the big three network newscasts. Imus watched CBS's coverage of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, and was impressed by Couric's ability to empathize with the victims without becoming maudlin.

"You guys should have much better ratings than you do," Imus told his guest. "Maybe it's something you're doing."

Greenfield unwisely made the excuse that, besides being in last place for at least 15 years, the CBS Evening News also suffers because its local affiliates do not have a strong program like The Oprah Winfrey Show as a lead-in.

"But I realize that trying to lay down a fact-based answer to a question of yours is a fool's error," he correctly told Imus. "But I never give up."

Having lost that battle, Greenfield moved on to the next item on the agenda: President Obama's critique of the Supreme Court in last week's State of the Union address, which Imus thought was inappropriate.

"The factual dispute about what Obama said and what the decision said is one of those things that can drive a non-lawyer crazy," said Greenfield, referring to the Court's recent decision to assign corporations the same free speech rights as individuals in campaigns.

The Court's decision, for example, would give a U.S.-based corporation owned by a foreign entity the right to produce advertisements endorsing one candidate or eschewing another. Yet there are laws prohibiting contributions from overseas.

Obama's condemnation of the Court was, Greenfield said, "something worth nothing." It was not, despite Imus's contention, akin to a South Korean parliamentary brouhaha with lawmakers throwing punches at one another.

Imus, for the record, would like to throw a punch at Harold Ford, Jr., the former Democratic Tennessee Congressman who lost a 2006 bid for the Senate there. Ford now wants to run for Senate in New York, and has flip-flopped on issues like abortion and gay marriage, both of which he said he was against when it was politically expedient to be so.

"He is trying to thread a very, very difficult needle," said Greenfield.

As for whether the another embarrassment to the Democratic Party, John Edwards, will ever rehabilitate himself, Greenfield had only this to say: "Not as a politician."

-Julie Kanfer