Thoughts on Katie Couric

Today, Katie Couric formally confirmed what we have known for weeks - she's leaving the anchor chair at CBS News. Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes is expected to be named her successor possibly as soon as next week.

Aside from being unable to lift CBS News out of the doldrums, Couric will be remembered for her Sarah Palin interview which Palin herself admits wasn't her finest hour.

Yet when I think of Couric's tenure at CBS News I think not of her interview with Palin but rather with the former Alaska Governor's Democratic vice-presidential rival Joe Biden. This was the interview in which Couric asked Biden if he had to be "uber careful" while on the campaign trial. Biden not only said that he didn't need to be careful but also told Couric that Franklin Delano Roosevelt went on television to talk to Americans about the 1929 stock market crash despite the fact FDR was neither President nor had TV been invented. And neither Ms. Couric nor the liberal media batted nary an eyelash. Of course, if Palin had made such a faux pas we would have never heard the end of it. Under those circumstances, Couric probably would have asked Palin to name FDR's Secretary of the Treasury. But in this case it's just Biden being Biden. So he gets no scrutiny. Nor do I think Couric would have made fun of Biden's children.

Of course, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter who sits in the anchor chair at CBS News or for that matter at ABC or NBC. They along with CNN, MSNBC, PBS and NPR will close ranks in support of President Obama. So perhaps in 2012, Biden will tell Scott Pelley how Woodrow Wilson went on radio to address the nation following the sinking of the Titanic.