I found this entire paragraph hilarious.
“Look, the decision’s been made that the president just isn’t going to get into an introspective mode of ‘we could have done this better,’ ” said one administration official who sat in on many of the campaign’s strategy meetings. Such concessions, the official said, would “play right into” Mr. Kerry’s argument. There was a time for Mr. Bush to make such concessions, the official said, but “that moment passed months ago.”
As Homer Simpson might say, it works on so many levels. First, Bush is playing right into Kerry’s argument anyway by failing to acknowledge his mistakes. KE04, for over a month now, has been focused on Bush’s inability to recognize reality. The president doesn’t want to admit that the country “could have done this better,” but that only serves to reinforce Kerry’s charge that he’s woefully out of touch and confused about what’s needed to fix existing problems.
Second, when, exactly, was the “moment” for Bush to make these obvious concessions? This administration official says it passed “months ago,” but as far as I can tell, Bush has never made a concession about any of his mistakes at any point in his entire professional life.
And finally, “introspective mode“? Bush doesn’t have to look inward to see how he’s failing, he can just pick up a newspaper. Oh wait; I forgot he doesn’t like to do that either.