EW YORK - David Letterman did not give George W. Bush a chance to redeem himself last night.
Following a strained appearance on ''The Late Show With David Letterman'' in March, when the Texas governor appeared via a sluggish remote feed, Bush appeared in the flesh last night.
Awkward delays would now be avoided; other kinds of awkwardness would not.
Bush began his appearance with a few taps of the microphone.
''I'm always checking these days,'' he told Letterman, chuckling.
Letterman appeared to appreciate Bush's reference to his unwitting use of a vulgarity to describe a reporter while near a live mike.
They bantered a little in the beginning, with Letterman getting all the funny lines. On the journalist gaffe, Letterman said: ''Did you ever feel the need to apologize to him?''
''Not really,'' the governor replied. ''It was inappropriate that people heard me say that.''
On the subject of the debates, Bush got a chance to make a joke:
''A lot of folks don't think I can string a sentence together,'' he said. ''The expectations were so low that all I had to do was say, `Hi, I'm George W. Bush.'''
That got plenty of laughs in the audience, but they were pretty much the governor's last. It soon became clear that Bush's appearance was to be no walk in the park.
Letterman proceeded to drill Bush on an endless series of weighty issues, first the death penalty.
''We make a lot of jokes about you electrocuting people in Texas here,'' Letterman said.
''I hope you're not laughing at the expense of the victims and the people who are put to death, of course,'' Bush said. ''It's a serious business.''
Like an aggressive Sunday talk-show host, Letterman asked the governor to justify the high number of executions in the Lone Star state. Bush went through his oft-stated explanation, that he thought the system was fair and it saved lives by deterring crime.
Bush got out of that thicket, only to be led into the situation in Yemen.
''If I found out who it was, they'd pay a serious price,'' Bush said.
''And what does that mean?'' Letterman asked, more than once.
On it went. The Middle East. Rwanda. Bosnia.
Behind smiles, things got testy. Letterman said he'd heard Bush was in favor of fuel exploration in the Alaskan wilderness, ''and I said, `Oh that's a joke! He's not gonna do that!' ''
''Yeah, well, you won't have any natural gas if we don't do it,'' Bush replied, before Letterman challenged him on air pollution in Houston. None of his answers satisfied his host.
''Now listen to me, governor, here's my point,'' Letterman said.
''I'm listening to ya,'' Bush said, summing up the evening. ''I don't have any choice but to listen to ya!''
