‘Unscripted, incoherent’

April 20, 2007

The president gave a fairly long speech yesterday in Tipp City, Ohio, and for the first time in nearly a year, opened the floor to a Q&A with the audience. Now, there wasn’t too much of a risk for Bush — this was a very friendly audience, with tickets distributed exclusively through the local chamber of commerce, but at this point, we’ll take what we can get. The president isn’t fond of questions, so even sycophantic inquiries offer a glimpse into Bush’s thinking.

Atrios posted a video clip from CNN of the event, which prompted Time’s Joe Klein to call the president “unplugged, unhinged, unscripted, incoherent.” Was it that bad? It was — and then some.

A Bush supporter stood up and asked how the president would respond “to the rather mistaken idea that the war in Iraq is becoming a war in Vietnam.” Here’s Bush’s answer, from the official White House transcript.

“Yes, thank you. There’s a lot of differences. First, the Iraqi people voted for a modern constitution, and then set up a government under that constitution. Secondly, the — that’s as opposed to two divided countries: north and south. In my judgment, the vast majority of people want to live underneath that constitution they passed. They want to live in peace. And what you’re seeing is radical on the fringe creating chaos in order to either get the people to lose confidence in their government, or for us to leave.

“A major difference as far as here at home is concerned is that our military is an all-volunteer army, and we need to keep it that way. By the way, the way you keep it that way is to make sure our troops have all they need to do their job, and to make sure their families are happy. (Applause.)

“There are some similarities, of course — death is terrible. Another similarity, of course, is that Vietnam was the first time a war was brought to our TV screens here in America on a regular basis. I’m looking around looking for baby boomers; I see a few of us here. It’s a different — it was the first time that the violence and horror of war was brought home. That’s the way it is today.

“Americans, rightly so, are concerned about whether or not we can succeed in Iraq. Nobody wants to be there if we can’t succeed, especially me. And these — violence on our TV screens affects our frame of mind, probably more so today than what took place in Vietnam. I want to remind you that after Vietnam, after we left, the — millions of people lost their life.”

At the end of this, Bush’s audience applauded. You’d think he had paid them.

It’s possible the transcript doesn’t do the remarks justice, but this was the president at his most breathtaking. I know we’re not supposed to question the president’s “intellectual limitations,” but this was Bush struggling badly with a softball from an unabashed fan. As Digby put it, “When a politician appears to be this stupid (and he seems exactly the same as he did when he was running for president in 2000) it’s not a good idea to assume that it’s just an act. Look at the results.”

Anonymous Liberal’s take was equally compelling

Imagine for a second that you’re an alien who just arrived on Earth … No, never mind. Not even necessary. Just imagine that you’re yourself — from the year 1998 — and that someone played this video clip for you and told you that the man in the video is the President of the United States, and he is trying to convince a hand-picked, fake-townhall audience to continue to support a disastrously ill-advised, horrendously unpopular, and seemingly unwinnable war in Iraq.

How totally unfathomable would such a revelation seem (above and beyond the whole ‘seeing the future’ aspect of it)? It’s just really hard to believe we’ve come to this, that the most powerful nation in the world, at a crucial moment in its history, is being led by someone who is so obviously not up to the task.

Watch the clip and tell me Americans should have confidence in this man’s intelligence. I dare you.

What do you expect? The man is a drug addled lunatic. No joke.

  • Actually, while I’ll have to wait to view the video, Boy George II seems to be conveying two points he very much wants out.

    First, the Media is giving us a false sense of the level of violence in Iraq and this is sapping America’s will to fight on. I think that’s a load of crap, and he ought to be complaining to the corporate media owners whose lock on political campaign spending he is protecting by resisting any requirement that they actually use some of the “Public’s Airways” to put political speeches on the air (and not whine at US!), but he will continue to convince his base that the rest of America is just a bunch of wimps unwilling to see Iraqi blood splattered accross a marketplace (when they are not calling us cowards for not cutting off funding for a war the Bushties and Republican’ts can’t stop themselves, and for not giving them a campaign issue for the next thirty years).

    Second, he’s saying that Iraq will become a fast motion genocide and ethnic cleansing (rather than the slow motion one we have now) if America leaves because, despite the blessing of Bushite Democracy (no state industries and every family gets their own AK-47) he has bestowed upon them, without the Americans there all the Iraqis will fall on each other in even more violent bloodletting.

    The latter point I think is false because the jerk Iraqi politicians hiding in the Green Zone, egging their constituents to killing each other, do so under an umbrella (one with a few holes admittedly) of U.S. protection. Take that protection away and the politicians will either quickly quell their supporters rampages or become the victums of them.

  • The guy who started compiling Bushism when Bush first came on the scene noted that W had the most malapropisms when confronted with his own mistakes or when put in a position where he would have to look critically at himself. Bush’s performance in Tipp City shows he was clearly having to confront his faults and didn’t like it one bit. What’s more, if the Bushism’s author’s theory holds true, he realizes he’s f’ed up in Iraq and is doing his damndest to tell it otherwise. He’s lying to the people but I think he’s finally realizing he’s lying to himself as well.

    With his little empire crumbling all around him, could this be the start of the big Bush meltdown? Will we start hearing of him talking to the White House portraits soon? Or worse?

  • Alcoholism and drug abuse do destroy brain cells. W is living proof of that.

    My suspicion is that W thinks that if Gonzales is forced to resign, he may well have the same fate. The country has lost confidence in him; as it becomes increasingly evident to even the dullest dolt that the surge is failing miserably in Iraq, even his Republican allies are deserting him. If George Bush truly loves America, he and Cheney will resign.

  • Bush leveraged a national tragedy into reelection. He’s seeded the federal government with true believers, expanded executive authority while marginalizing Congress and appointing 2 radically conservative SC judges. He’s expanded government surveillance of our phones, e-mails, libraary borrowings, bank accounts and medicine cabinets. He’s stalled efforts to curb global warming, cut protections once provided by the EPA, FDA, and silenced scientists who dare refute the literal word of bible or the backward beliefs of those who claim to know the mind of the almighty. The US can now torture, imprision without providing cause and prosecute without allowing a reasonable defense. He’s built bases in the middle east, and fattened the bank accounts of those whose bank accounts were already obscene. The middle class — the masses — have not been so economically impotent in decades.

    For such an idiot, this guy has been awfully successful.

  • This is nothing compared to what he’s going to sound like this summer.

    Is he walking around talking to the paintings yet? He probably doesn’t know who any of them are.

    bubba is right about the impeachment. The fact that the Dem leadership hasn’t even threatened his removal after they admitted violating federal law is a disgrace. The only way they can even begin to wash that off would be to remove them soon before anything worse happens.

    What worse could happen? Ask John McCain.

  • Any successes W has had, beep52, must be credited to Rove. W does not have the acumen necessary to plot, much less succeed, the fall of morality. Rove, however, does.

    W: Resign if you suppport the military.

  • Nation, World,

    On behalf of the super rich Ohio suburbia, I apologize for applauding our lying bastard of a president.

    Yours,
    Ohioan

  • Well, he does more or less have the talking points committed to memory, albeit in random order and with no ability to describe how they fit together.

    Er, except for the “two divided countries” part. Have they really not told him how many parts Iraq will have to be partitioned into once it’s finally, inevitably partitioned?

  • Why are we not yet Impeaching the lot of them.

    Because Newt and the rest of the GOP fuqtards decided to spend the better part of 1992 – 2000 searching for anything to impeach Clinton. The public quickly grew tired of it but, unfortunately, that didn’t stop Newt Co. from continuing their pointless witch hunt.

    Thanks to them, now impeachment would just look like political retribution, rather than the necessary action needed to remove what is, by any stretch of any imagination, the most morally corrupt, ideologically bankrupt, criminally insane administration in the history of our country.

    Either that, or the Dems just don’t have the guts to do it.

  • Mark D, I truly believe that the American public would have the stomach for an impeachment of these folks. The light bulbs above their heads are starting to go off, albeit 2+ years too late. The issue is clearly the Dems…

  • Screen image one—of the United Stets of America:

    “This is your country.”

    Screen image two—of George W. Bush surrounded by flag-draped coffins:

    “This is your country of drugs. Get the message?”

  • A Bush supporter stood up and asked how the president would respond “to the rather mistaken idea that the war in Iraq is becoming a war in Vietnam.”

    Silly BushBot. Everyone knows that: Iraq is nothing like Vietnam because Bush had a plan for getting out of ‘Nam. [/snarkasm]

    “It’s a different — it was the first time that the violence and horror of war was brought home.”

    First of all, he’s wrong (again) it just wasn’t brought home as quickly and as regularly. But I read that and thought: No wonder he went to such lengths to keep out of the fighting.

    I’m surprised he dares to talk about ‘Nam at all, but then I’m not a shameless drunk.

  • It is indeed telling that this public verbal unravelling was occurring pretty much the same time as Gonzales, “oh yes, i AM prepared!” testimony.

    These are men of the highest office in the land each publicly displaying atrociously delusional detachment from reality.

    Then in unbelievable surrealism this morning, one should-be mental patient says of the other that he “was pleased with (his) testimony” and assures us he has full confidence in his abilities. One might wonder if also, both Bush and Gonzales awoke and went to the mirror this morning to say, “gosh, you were great yesterday!” If so, rest assured, they both believe it.

    Really makes one wonder just exactly what is is?

  • Crazy like a fox. This disaster of a speech took some attention away from an even more disconcerting performance by AG AG. Just kidding. Junior has been phoning in his presidency for six years.

  • I’m still trying to understand this part:

    “A major difference as far as here at home is concerned is that our military is an all-volunteer army, and we need to keep it that way. By the way, the way you keep it that way is to make sure our troops have all they need to do their job, and to make sure their families are happy.”

    I guess the point is that we have to support the troops by giving them adequate funding. Let’s leave aside the fact that he hasn’t supported them very well: slashed veterans benefits, terrible medical rehab, no body armor, no HMV armor, etc.

    Is he saying that if Democrats cut off funding to the troops (which they’ve never said they’ll do), we won’t be able to “keep it that way”? i.e. we’ll go back to a draft? i.e. instead of following the will of the elected Congress, he’ll be forced to use executive police powers to force young Americans to fight and die for this country???!!!???

    OK, I’m on a paranoid rant here. But the more you listen to this guy, the more it seems that paranoid ranting is the only rational response.

  • Steve, it was right on target, with or without spelling mistakes. Now there’s a public service announcement I’d like to see on teevee!

  • Bush said: “I want to remind you that after Vietnam, after we left, the — millions of people lost their life.”

    Is this true? Sure, people died; Vietnamese killed Vietnamese. But millions?

    Is this another “Vietnam myth,” like returning home US soldiers were spat on?

  • I’m not as appalled by the speech as some. To me, all Bush speeches sound like this. They’re based on events in another universe that exists in Bush’s addled mind.

    Regarding impeachment, it seems it will never happen, but if it does, Republicans may be reminded of a couple of precedents Clinton’s impeachment established. One was the ruling that okay-ed testimony by Secret Service personnel. That should take some wind out of the argument of executive privilege and a president’s “confidentiality” rights.

    Another, although it may not be directly linked to the Clinton impeachment, was the ruling that a sitting (or bike-riding) president could be sued.

    I really think “something” will be done about Bush before his term ends, and it may become a precedent in itself. It could be a caretaker White House group (as with Reagan), a forced resignation, or something else. I also think that if Bush orders certain military action (major strikes against Iran, for example), the Joint Chiefs will refuse.

    The problem with impeachment is that we’d get Cheney, and I think it would be hard to convict him.

  • Later, when he talked about his hope for succeeding in Iraq, Bush said, “Remember the rug?”

    So W thinks his wife should pick out Iraq policy???

  • Is this true? Sure, people died; Vietnamese killed Vietnamese. But millions?

    Don’t trust me since I didn’t look up the knowledge myself, but I believe that this is false. Some have said that it was around tens of thousands in Vietnam…many were imprisoned/put in reeducation camps, but I don’t think there were mass killings on the level of millions.

    Others have commented that he could have been thinking of Cambodia, since I believe millions were killed by Pol Pot. Not that confusing countries is a good excuse for the President of the United States of America, but it is a potential insight into the talking points he was given and subsequently screwed up.

  • I can’t watch him even on tape or online…it disgusts me to no end. And this man thinks history will treat him kindly?? Think again Georgie…there are enough of us left in the US to make certain that the next generations know exactly how bad it gets when the Supreme Court appoints a President who didn’t win the popular vote.

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