This was an above average day for the Sunday News Shows. There was a number of quality discussions. The main issues were (1) the salary cuts for the bailout bank execs, (2) Afghanistan and Cheney’s “dithering” comment, and (3) the health care reform bill.

I thought that Chuck Schumer, NY U.S. Senator, did a better than usual job on Meet the Press. I thought that Pat Buchanan was pretty close when he called the salary cuts for the bailout execs “populist appeasement.” I’d give that the coined phrase of the day, although I doubt if Buchanan coined it. Populism isn’t always bad.

Mort Zuckerman said today that management was the most important part of the U.S. economy. That’s absurd. Workers can produce a product without anyone serving outside the manufacturing cycle. But you can’t have all management and no one working on production. Nothing will get produced to manage.

But all in all, I have to give the McLaughlin Show the show of the week for the shows I saw. And they had the most interesting segment by far to me, which was about whether or not Hillary Clinton would quit as Secretary of State and run against Obama in the Democratic primary. Apparently Monica Crowley had written a column in the Washington Times a couple weeks ago where she predicted that Clinton would do just that. Pat Buchanan commented that Clinton “was not brain dead.”

Crowley’s theory is predicated on the assumption that unemployment would stay really high. McLaughlin had a very complimentary background video which shows how Clinton was working her you know what off, traveling all over the world and getting a lot done, and maintaining a higher approval rating than Obama.

The reason that Clinton’s approval ratings are high and she is getting things done is that she is a good team player. Obama trusts her and gives her a lot of authority, probably just as he promised when he offered her the cabinet position. And she has delivered. But you can’t jump from that to assuming that if Clinton had been in Obama’s position that she wouldn’t be facing the same challenges.

I do agree with Zuckerman on one thing - that the unemployment rate will have a strong influence on the outcome of the midterm and the re-election campaign cycles. I think it will have to show progress toward the better. The nature of that progress will determine the plus or minus of it on the election. It’s a complex situation, and simple models don’t work.