The past two weeks have provided an opportunity to compare the performance of a pair of leading candidates to succeed George Stephanopoulos as the host of ABC’s This Week. By one measure, at least, White House correspondent Jake Tapper has emerged with an advantage over Nightline co-anchor Terry Moran, drawing 60,000 more viewers. That might seem slim, but a closer look at the numbers indicates that ABC might want to consider moving in Tapper’s direction.

As Joe Lieberman‘s recent gambit on the health care bill shows, the senator from Connecticut is not afraid to take unpopular — though often effective — stands. Yesterday, on This Week With George Stephanopoulos, Lieberman came to the defense of America’s detainment center at Guantanamo Bay, which he acknowledged had a “bad reputation,” but called a “humane” place. Video after the jump:

Season’s greetings? Speaking on This Week With George Stephanopoulos this weekend, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman warned that there is still a “reasonably high chance” of a sharp economic contraction in 2010. As optimistic as the financial markets have been, Krugman said that he doesn’t see “where it’s supposed to come from,” and is especially worried about the second half of the year. Video after the jump:

George Stephanopoulos‘ move to Good Morning America has left open the plum assignment of Sunday morning talk-show host. The This Week gig is not just a big break for the eventual host, but a real opportunity for ABC News to break NBC’s ratings stranglehold on Sunday mornings.

On a very short list of rumored Stephanopoulos replacements sits ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper.

After weeks of speculation, ABC has finally confirmed what everyone knew all along: George Stephanopoulos has been named host of Good Morning America, headline a series of moves that effectively reshuffles the ABC talent assignments. The other big news is that fan favorite Chris Cuomo will now host 20/20. Cuomo’s spot at GMA will now be filled by JuJu Chang. Full press release after the jump.

Sunday on This Week with George Stephanopoulus, Defense Secretary Robert Gates was asked point blank about the location of Osama bin Laden, and his answer was far from encouraging. “Well, we don’t know for a fact where Osama bin Laden is. If we did, we’d go get him,” said Secretary Gates, before adding that “it’s been years” since any good intelligence on his whereabouts.

Climategate has slowly but steadily bubbled up from fringe meme on the Internet to hot-button political and scientific cause. Do a set of emails from a hacked climate research server show that global warming is a hoax? Paul Krugman contends that there was “not a single smoking gun” to Climategate, and that the global warming skeptics using the hacked emails as evidence need to brush up on their science.

Maybe Newsweek was onto something, after all. At the end of the first week of Sarah Palin’s hugely successful book tour the question most pundits (and much of the G.O.P.) seem to be asking themselves is what do we do about the Palin problem. Answer: no one has a clue.

White House senior adviser David Axelrod joined George Stephanopoulos to follow-up on remarks that Fox News isn’t really a news station. After a clip Rupert Murdoch about how the White House is actually helping Fox News’s ratings, Stephanopoulos really cut to the bone, asking Axelrod “Are You Worried That Your Strategy is Fortifying Your Enemy?” The enemy, of course, is Fox News.

The Internet is making journalist objectivity tricky business these days! This Week pundit Cokie Roberts was caught on camera yesterday advocating the death penalty for Roman Polanski. Someone should have asked her what to do about Dave!

Did President Obama’s Sunday media blitz make a difference? It’s hard to tell, though the headlines would suggest that the takeaway thus far seems to be split between issues of race and Obama’s ability to manage the media. So what if anything did this uber media savvy President have to say about the press is spends so much of his time courting? Mostly that the media loves rude. And he said it a lot.

Pres. Barack Obama has now completed his unprecedented Sunday show media blitz (“El Completo Ginsburg“), and all the interviews have aired.

We took a look at how the four interviews went (excluding Univision for this post), and what was learned, looking at several categories: number of questions, first, last and best question and how the host handled the all-important “race” question. Here are the results:

George Stephanopoulos responds to the Politico story which reported that he, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, and former Clinton advisers Paul Begala and James Carville share a daily, morning conference call. And a quote from the original story, which if read closely doesn’t actually say the four are on the phone at the same time

As we reported earlier today, ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos appeared last night on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor to talk about health care. A spirited back and forth ensued, which culminated in a moment, though very subtle, where the proudly independent Fox News Anchor very nearly admits to being a Republican. Video after the jump…

Since Obama was elected, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has positioned himself at the heart of the national debate over health care, arguing from a pro-business, anti-public option vantage. He’s written countless op-eds, blogged, Twittered, given newspaper interviews, and made the rounds on political talk shows, most recently This Week with George Stephanopoulos and The O’Reilly Factor, to promote his platform.