NEW YORK (AP) - You can only imagine the rush David Gregory felt when his “Meet the Press” guest, Vice President Joe Biden, took a cue from him and blurted out some history.
Midway through that memorable interview last May, Biden seized the bait when Gregory happened to ask his position on gay marriage.
“Once he mentioned the societal impact of `Will & Grace,’” says Gregory, “I knew we were off to the races.”
Biden surprised everyone (maybe even himself) by declaring he was “absolutely comfortable” with same-sex married couples enjoying the same rights as heterosexual married couples, thus inadvertently prodding President Barack Obama to publicly affirm his own support for same-sex unions days later.
That kind of Beltway Booyah moment helps account for why Gregory loves hosting “Meet the Press,” NBC’s venerable Sunday morning public-affairs program he took over four years ago (and where he recently accepted what the network calls its “long-term commitment” for his services).
“This is an agenda-setting program,” says Gregory. “What happens on `Meet the Press’ can definitely make news and frame the debate.”
But it isn’t just the bombshells that give Gregory a kick. On “Meet the Press” (check local listings) he also experiences the occasional interview that, as he describes it, seems akin to a dream-state.
Like the recent visit by former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
“I was so engaged in talking to him,” says Gregory, “that I wasn’t thinking about the fact that we were on television, in the middle of the show. That’s a pretty great feeling.”
But such interrogatory rapture isn’t the norm, he notes during a chat not long ago at NBC’s New York headquarters.
“I sometimes have a sense that, `Wow, I’m not getting anything here, so how hard do I want to drill into this stone before I move on and try something slightly different?’
“Above all,” he stresses, “the program needs to be a civil forum.”
It generally is _ even when Gregory faced National Rifle Association President Wayne LaPierre not long after the shootings in Newtown, Conn.
That interview “got pretty aggressive on both ends,” Gregory acknowledges.
And in the heated atmosphere of the gun-control debate, this interview’s substance was largely upstaged by a prop Gregory pulled out in the course of his questioning: a high-capacity ammunition magazine, the possession of which turned out to be against local gun laws. (After an investigation by the District of Columbia’s Office of the Attorney General, prosecutors said in January that Gregory wouldn’t face charges. He now says he is legally prohibited from commenting.)
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