First of all Time Russert was pulling his punches. While he did ask some tough questions he never followed up on them, allowing Bush to dodge and generalize at will. He kept trying to push Bush into admiting his mistakes, and it only worked on a superficial level.
While Bush seemed tired and a bit scared and confused, his answers were consistant with his worldview. On the Iraq WMD issue, he used the "9/11" technique, pretty much exonerating himself of all past, present and future mistakes with the statement "We are in a war against terror, we were using the best intellegence available." Implying that the CIA messed up, not him. Also note that the war on terror has no forseeable outcome, much like the war on drugs, so the implication was that Bush feels he has a blank check to do whatever he feels is nessesary as long as he is in office without personal responsibilty.
On the economic side Bush continued to press that his tax cuts are fixing the economy. He said that the deficit would be halved in 5 years. While this is semitrue on paper it is revealed as a sham upon doing just a bit of research. For example, the current budget that Bush has just sent to Congress for the year 2004 has $0 set aside for Iraq.
Russert tried to make Bush say he wouldn't lower taxes until the deficit was improved, but Bush wouldn't commit. Russert brought up Bush's vietnam record and Bush responded well, stating that he would release the records if he could find them and that noone should diminish the National Guard'd importance. I see that Bush has followed through and today released some records which showed he was at least paid during the time in question. A rare moment happened when Russert asked him about his Skull and Bones membership at Yale. Bush chuckled and said he couldn't comment.
Bush repeated himself a lot. The gist was "We attacked Iraq because Iraq looked dangerous through the prism of 9-11. We used the best intellegence available, and it was worth it whether Saddam had weapons or no, because he could have built them later and used them, or given them to terrorists."
I think Bush has moved into underdog position for the upcoming election, despite his command of resourses.
edit: a few articles on the interview:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2095184/
http://slate.msn.com/id/2095237/
http://slate.msn.com/id/2095160/
Edited, Tue Feb 10 15:07:48 2004 by Meadros