The SCPC (so-called news conference)
I have a fantasy that one day the majority of Americans watching George W. Bush try to explain his policies will finally be forced by overwhelming evidence on the TV screen to ask themselves, is this the best we can do? How can it be that the inarticulate, incurious and incautious Bush is the leader of the United States of America?
Of course, I realize that this will remain a fantasy. For once again, after viewing what I regarded as a dismal, embarrassing and at times shockingly inept performance by the president, I woke up to the usual and predictable divide among commentators. I have to wonder if in the privacy of their own homes, right wing pundits such as Fred Barnes will acknowledge, if only to themselves, that Bush isn’t sounding dumb by design with the aim of bypassing the “political elite” and talking to the “mass.” C’mon guys, Bush can’t speak as well as probably 80% of senior managers in American companies and 90% of college professors. And, as far as I’m concerned, Dan Rather needs to go undercover again somewhere to get back in touch with reality. Dan called Bush’s show “steady, competent and forceful.”
Josh Marshall, I think, had it right:
I don’t know how to give a meaningful analysis of how the president did tonight. (I didn’t watch it live, but taped, later in the evening.) Perhaps my opinions of the man and his record are too set in stone for me to provide an objective take. But, even setting aside the awkward moments where the president couldn’t think of any mistake he’d ever made on foreign policy since 9/11, what I saw was a man with a quiver of cliches and a few simple stock arguments. Whatever the question, he grabbed a handful of those and tossed them back.
It’s become a bit impolitic in Washington to question whether the president really knows what he’s doing or whether he has any sort of a detailed handle on what’s going on on his watch. But I didn’t see much sign of either.