Whenever I judge something to be the worst something I've ever seen, I always take into account how much respect I have for the person doing it in the first place. I am undoubtedly the worst pitching-wedge player in the world. But if, say, Phil Mickelson foozles one a foot in front of his feet, that's worse than any clumsy effort I've ever mustered, because he's Phil Mickelson and I'm not.

So, when I say that, on Tuesday afternoon, my man Chuck Todd conducted the worst political interview I've ever seen, I know that somewhere out there is a Steve Doocy interview that is objectively worse. But, whatever you may think of his oeuvre, my man Chuck Todd is worthy of substantial respect as an interviewer. So when he drops a dead raccoon on his audience the way he did on Tuesday's Meet The Press Daily, attention (and derision) must be paid.

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On his afternoon Meet The Press, my man Chuck Todd hosted Tom DeLay, the former thug who once held considerable power in the House of Representatives and was present at the creation of the epidemic of gerrymandering and voter dilution that has spread across the nation. DeLay has a new book-like product to plug and, as appalling as it may be to anyone who was conscious during the 1990s, Chuck urged DeLay to reminisce about the golden era of legislative genius over which he presided.

(You remember. It was the time when DeLay and the Republicans in the House wanted to bring a brain-dead woman to Washington to testify, and then DeLay went on to threaten federal judges. Och, as Mr. Dooley said, thim was the days.)

My man Chuck Todd even let DeLay get away with saying that it was only the sneaky liberal press who called him The Hammer. This is arrant horseshit and it only got worse when they started talking about the failure of the Republican healthcare plan.

Todd: So your critique on this is the entire process from the beginning? That it was too rushed? How would you have set about trying to do this?

DeLay: Chuck, let me just put it in perspective. Before Obamacare, everybody got health care. But the Democrats wanted to control healthcare through health insurance and bring the federal government into this unconstitutionally. And they did it. But right after that, the American people, and certainly Republicans and Tea Partiers, were screened about Obamacare. They didn't ask for replacement. The Republicans did replacement in answer to the media and the Democrats who said, "If you repeal, what're you going to replace it with?" So they came up with a replacement.

Todd: So you think the problem was accepting the premise of a replacement?

DeLay: Exactly.

No, Chuck. No! Oh my sweet juggling Jesus, a thousand times no. Leave aside the fact you should have noted that the Supreme Court determined that the ACA was constitutional, no matter what the retired bug-squasher plugging his book thinks. In any case, the interview should have ended right here:

"Chuck, let me just put it in perspective. Before Obamacare, everybody got healthcare."

You can't just sit there like a cigar-store moderator and let him get away with something so egregiously untrue, much less let him base the rest of the argument on it. Before the ACA was passed, everybody didn't get healthcare. That was the reason that Harris Wofford ran for the Senate in Pennsylvania on the issue. That was the reason Bill and Hillary Clinton made a run at it in the early 1990s. That was why Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts did everything but mow the lawns of every Democrat in the Great and General Court to get his plan passed up here. And that's why Barack Obama broke as much rock as he did to pass the ACA. Hell, "everybody" doesn't get healthcare now, but more of them do than did before.

This is a master class in how not to conduct an interview, and that's not even to ask the question of why in the fck we should have a retired goon like Tom DeLay foisted on us in the first place. Let him plug his book to Doocy and the other two andirons on the couch there.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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