ABC This Week (9/25/11):

CHRISTINE AMANPOUR: And coming up, Rick Perry on the ropes.

PERRY: Yep, there may be slicker candidates and there may be smoother debaters, but I know what I believe in, and I'm going to stand on that belief every day. I will guide this country with a deep, deep rudder.

AMANPOUR: Can the new frontrunner come back from a shaky debate performance? Or is Chris Christie waiting in the wings to steal his thunder?

New York Times (9/26/11):

After Perry's Debate Showing, Eyes Turn Toward Christie

Washington Post (9/26/11):

Texas Gov. Rick Perry's recent stumbles--his rambling attempt at last week's GOP presidential debate to attack former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's flip-flopping is a prime example--have renewed speculation that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie might rethink his "no go" decision on the 2012 race.

When ABC announced that CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour would take over as host of their Sunday chat show This Week, there were rumblings about how different things would be. Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales wrote a nasty hit piece on Amanpour in which he worried that the show focuses on "inside-the-Beltway palaver, an area where Amanpour is widely considered to be deficient." He seemed to mean that was a bad thing. ABC president David Westin, meanwhile, wrote in a memo to ABC staffers, "With Christiane we have the opportunity to provide our audiences with something different on Sunday mornings."

Something different, something not so Beltway-oriented. Sounds good.

Oh, the show starts this weekend. And they've announced the guests: Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Not exactly strangers to inside-the-Beltway palaver.

Well, will the pundit roundtable change, then? Not according to this recent interview with Amanpour (TVNewser, 3/18/10), where she calls George Will a "national treasure."