Brit in the White House The Fox News anchor on the state of the State of the Union address
Brit Hume, Fox News
On Tuesday (Jan. 31), prime-time entertainment will take a break for
President Bush's State of the Union address.
Brit Hume, the Washington, D.C., managing editor for Fox News has sat through a couple dozen of these speeches, and he'll be there with his team from
Special Report (the program broadcast-network newspeople have been known to take a peak at before their own evening shows go on the air). Hume talked to The Biz about what he expects that night and why he insists on catering his coverage to people who are actually interested in the news.
TVGuide.com: So what should we look for when we watch on Tuesday?
Brit Hume: The tradition of it is that the president tries to lay out some themes for the year. As important as that is, you try to lay out an agenda and try to develop a little momentum for it.
TVGuide.com: Given the kind of year that the president has had, will he try to do anything different to move the needle a little bit?
Hume: I think he'll try to deal with some issues he wasn't involved in before. He may speak up on behalf of lobbying reform. But State of the Union addresses tend to be laundry lists — they tend not to be soaring dramatic addresses. They are specific agenda-directed speeches.... This president is going to have to say something about Iraq. I think it's fairly clear what he'll say — he'll say the Iraqis stepped up to the plate every time there was a big turning point politically, and they'll watch the progress of the training of the troops and tell you it's going better than many people thought. The question then becomes Iran. He may say a lot or he may say a little about that. But that's a burning issue. The options are difficult. That will be a test for him.
TVGuide.com: So do the guys in the D.C. bureau take bets on how many times the president will be interrupted by applause during the speech?
Hume: No, but we always count it. It's an anchor's parlor trick. You like to say how long the speech was and how many times it was interrupted by applause. You always work your way through what you deem to be the highlights of it and hope what you have cited isn't completely out of phase with the morning papers. It's your worst fear.... The truth is, the only thing more predictable than a State of the Union address is the reaction to a State of the Union address. If it's a Republican president, the Republican legislators say it was a great address and it inspired the nation. The Democrats will say the president failed to do this, that and the other thing. You cover it every year, but it is not likely to produce great shocks.
TVGuide.com: It seems these days that partisan reactions are more predictable than they've ever been. How do you make that interesting when you cover Washington every night?
Hume: In a sense, it is more interesting than it's ever been because it's so strong. You have a more partisan atmosphere than any presidency I can remember. I was around during the days of Nixon. As much as President Nixon was despised by the political opposition, it wasn't as bad as this. The resistance to President Bush is the most intense I've ever seen, the most partisan I've ever seen. It hasn't proven effective for the opposition party, but it's like nothing I've ever seen before. If you have a rooting interest, this stuff is compelling.
TVGuide.com: It may be compelling to the core news viewer, but...
Hume: How do you reach out to the larger audience, you mean? If you spend your time doing news for people who don't like news, you're on a fool's errand. What you try to do is the most interesting and intelligent and sophisticated broadcast you can do about the subject at hand and believe that's the way to attract a big news audience. Everybody else will have to take care of themselves. My feeling about this is if it becomes "Well, nobody cares about this, so let's bring on Matt Damon or Jessica Simpson to analyze this" — once you start that, you're on the road to having nobody watch. You can't get people to care about things they're not interested in. On a night like this, you have to command the trust of people who care about news.
TVGuide.com: Do you have anything special planned for your broadcast on Tuesday? Are we going to see something we haven't seen before?
Hume: Yeah, we're going to have Jessica Simpson and Matt Damon. No, we're going to have the usual team. Our White House correspondent [Carl Cameron] at the White House; our congressional correspondent [Brian Wilson] will be on the hill. My analytical team from Special Report will be with me and augmented by others.
TVGuide.com: I know you have a job during the evening news hours, but I was wondering, as an alum of World News Tonight, if you've seen the new broadcast and what you think of it.
Hume: I've just seen glimpses of it, and it didn't seem terribly compelling. But they're just getting started, so it's too early to tell. Experience in an anchor is something that viewers value. It gives them the sense that the person they are watching knows what's really important and can be trusted to handle major news. I think the people ABC has tapped for its anchor team [Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff] are attractive people, and perhaps very talented people, but they seem by relative standards inexperienced.
TVGuide.com: Are you surprised they didn't go with Charlie Gibson?
Hume: I would have gone with Charlie in a heartbeat.
TVGuide.com: Any predictions for the presidential race in 2008?
Hume: It's way too early. We're all kind of licking our chops over it because you're going to have contested races in both parties. It's going to be a feast for political reporters like me. All of us are going to be in hog heaven in the early stages of '08.
