Perhaps the strangest part of Bush’s speech on Iraq last night wasn’t the address but the reaction. The nearly 800 troops on hand at Fort Bragg, N.C. were eerily silent for nearly the entire event. For a president who thrives on sycophants cheering his every word at carefully-scripted rallies, it must have been unnerving.
There was one moment of mild enthusiasm when Bush said, “we will stay in the fight until the fight is won.” It didn’t generate immediate or sustained applause, but the audience did clap.
But as it turns out, probably the most newsworthy angle to last night’s speech was not the remarks that earned applause, but how that applause was generated.
NBC’s Kelly O’Connell, reporting from Fort Bragg, told [Brian] Williams afterward that the applause appeared to have been “triggered by members of the president’s advance team” and that once they began clapping, the soldiers joined in.
ABC and Fox reported the same thing.
To be fair, the White House advance team may have intentionally been going for subdued event. There was no applause when Bush took the stage because the troops were standing at attention. CNN reported that Bush aides invited a subdued response because they didn’t want to appear to be having a political rally on a military base during a war. Whether this was a description of a pre-determined plan or a post-speech rationalization for a tepid response remains to be seen.
But in either case, when the commander in chief has to rely on aides to coax applause from the troops, it’s the height of embarrassment. It’s also the kind of thing that should prompt some follow-up from the intrepid White House press corps. How about a few questions for Scott McClellan such as, “Were advance team members not satisfied letting troops decide for themselves when to clap?”