Here's what Mr. “Punch Drunk” told Howie Kurtz about interviewing the POTUS, just hours before Kroft's Obama interview aired on 60 Minutes Sunday night [emphasis added]:

“I think that interviews with presidents are different than almost anything else. They're sort of the last bastion of civility ... particularly when you're in the Oval Office. You're not supposed to wag your finger at him, and you're not supposed to get -- it's supposed to be civil. And so you always try and keep that in mind.”

Keenly aware that Oval Office interviews are supposed to be especially civil, what did Kroft do? He inserted himself into the story--he manufactured news--by asking Obama the idiotic and disrespectful question about whether the president was “punch drunk.”

Obama had smiled and laughed a couple times during the interview. Once was in response to an even dumber question from Kroft (see here). And in another instance, Obama used what he called “gallows humor” to acknowledge the fact that public support for bailing out the U.S. auto workers had collapsed. And from there, Kroft began lecturing Obama--figuratively wagging his finger at him--about laughing too much, and then he asked a juvenile question about being punch drunk.

As conservative Fred Barnes noted yesterday, Kroft's left-field query was “extremely disrespectful and rude.”

So much for Kroft being “civil.”