There’s No Love Lost Between Michael Steele And Tim Kaine

Larry King has been on a roll lately. Between confirming David Paterson’s blindness to calling Johnny Weir “fierce” and getting Toyota President Akio Toyoda to admit his fears of not being considered compassionate enough, Larry King Live has made for some must-see TV. Yesterday was no exception, with DNC Chair Tim Kaine and RNC Chair Michael Steele meeting for the first time in quite a while after circling each other on the cable news rounds for months to discuss the health care reform, Jim Bunning’s pseudo-filibuster and business as usual in Washington.

The nature of the two chairmen—one a mild-mannered policy wonk, the other an emotive political showman—already made the debate a brilliant premise, but neither of them were exactly true to their cable news characters. In fact, it appeared that one chairman was channeling the other. Steele did his best to stick to solid facts and keep his tone down, insisting Bunning’s roadblock was “consistent with what the Democrats and the President have been saying they want to do from the very beginning,” while Kaine accused the Republicans of depriving 500,000 Americans of health care and pulling “obstructionist stunts.”

It didn’t take long before Steele accused Kaine of pulling an emotional stunt himself and jumping into the “great theatre in Washington,” and for him to feel compelled to upstage him. “I don’t know if you laugh or cry in the car on your way to these interviews,” he told Kaine, “because the stuff you’ve got to try to shill and sell to the American people— I don’t envy you.”

No love lost between these two. Watch the clip from last night below: