‘What exactly did I say?’

June 11, 2007

Bush at a press conference on Saturday:

Q: And on the deadline [for Kosovo independence]?

Bush: In terms of the deadline, there needs to be one. This needs to come — this needs to happen. Now it’s time, in our judgment, to move the Ahtisaari plan. There’s been a series of delays. You might remember there was a moment when something was happening, and they said, no, we need a little more time to try to work through a U.N. Security Council resolution. And our view is that time is up.

Bush at a press conference on Sunday:

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. Yesterday you called for a deadline for U.N. action on Kosovo. When would you like that deadline set? And are you at all concerned that taking that type of a stance is going to further inflame U.S. relations with Russia? And is there any chance that you’re going to sign on to the Russian missile defense proposal?

Bush: Thanks. A couple of points on that. First of all, I don’t think I called for a deadline. I thought I said, time — I did? What exactly did I say? I said, “deadline”? Okay, yes, then I meant what I said.

At which point assembled reporters started laughing at him.

Kevin asked, “[I]s it really too much to ask the president of the United States to take his own policies seriously enough to actually know what they are?”

Apparently so.

(also posted this comment at Political Animal)

Is it time to consider if the guy has moved from the worthy-of-contempt phase to the worthy-of-pity phase? Think about the chest-thumping incident, the “stomach-flu”-morning-after-drinking-near-beer incident. He couldn’t get his immigration bill passed, his atty general is subject to universal ridicule, his party’s candidates show him no respect, even his media fellators have mostly jumped ship (Fred Barnes, of course, excepted). And he’s clueless about the details of his Kosovo policy, which might not be too bad – except that he’s in Albania.

Clinton at the end of his term was weakened but well liked; Reagan at the end of his term was weakened but in the first stages of deification. Bush is ignored when he isn’t being ridiculed, even by his own side.

He’s still dangerous, in the sense that a rotting roof-beam is dangerous. You can worry about the roof-beam, but can you hate it?

  • What a goddamned, God-awful disgrace and utter embarrassment to America George W. Bush is. How can he live with himself? May I suggest suicide, “Mr. President”?

    Reminds me of The Usurper-In-Chief’s remarks of September 13, 2001:

    “The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him.”

  • He has policies? Huh. I think he often has set pieces he delivers as a sort of Pavlovian response to key words he hears in the questions, but I don’t think he understands “policies,” per se. Maybe that’s too harsh – but when he responds to a question like he did, it makes it pretty clear that he has no idea what he’s talking about.

    He has PR campaigns, where he attempts to sell his talking points to people who are predisposed to buy them. He likes to sell, but he doesn’t like to work, so once he thinks the product is “sold,” he’s off to something else. Very short attention span when it comes to actual work.

    Honestly, this has been the longest. presidency. ever.

  • isn’t it just too cute that six years in to all the death, lies, thievery and corruption, chimpy still charms the white house press corps who giggle at his latest idiocies.

  • Albania is the ONLY European place where Bush has received a non-violent welcome recently…

    … and he managed to turn off his Albanian fans with the Kosovo deadline flap. I stand in awe.

  • we will not rest until we find him

    I’ll have you know that he has indeed not rested since.

    Means what he says, says what he means.

    Except when he’s pandering for true love in Albania.

  • Deadlines? We need deadlines in Kosovo but we can’t even have a timetable and associated benchmarks in Iraq?

    Monty Python could not have created Bush and done as good a job.

    W: “I call for a deadline!”
    Reporter: “You called for a deadline…”
    W:”No I didn’t”
    Reporter: “Yes you did, just then you said “I call for a deadline”
    W:”No I didn’t.”
    (catapult flings reporter into the Patomac) AHHHHHHH!

  • The weekend clearly shows that the presidunce is a strange, mechano-genetic blending of Disney animatronics and the skills of the late Jim Henderson. No human being could be this incredibly dumb. It’s just not biologically feasible—and if it is, then the entire Bush clan should be forcibly prevented from procreating.

    And MNP—I’d suggest combining your idea with JKap’s, and use that catapault to launch “mr. president” into the moving rotor blades of Marine One. Just think of the helicopter as a ” mechanical killer rabbit….”

  • Haik is right. Bush is transforming into Paris Hilton. If he says something stupid, the press picks up on that and ignores the big issues.

  • The Bush legacy is secure. Can there be any doubt that he will go down in history as one of the biggest buffoons of all time? It is probably dangerous to laugh at this lunatic. If hard reality slaps him in the face, there is no telling what he might do.

  • Give the guy a break! He only looks like a buffoon if you read both quotes in close proximity to each other. If you forget what he said the day before, like he did, it’s easier to imagine Bush as Golden Avatar of Freedom.

  • The trouble with the way the press laughs at the Preznit is that it’s not the scornful, taunting laughter he richly deserves. If they were to point at him and have trouble staying in their seats, it’d be obvious ridicule. As it is, it’s easy laughter, almost sympathetic to the tough job the United States’ chief representative to the world is having in warming up the crowd. This continues to facilitate the Texas Turnip’s belief that he could have had a career in standup, if God hadn’t tapped him for greater things. He thinks he’s funny, people. He sees himself working the crowd, keeping it light, showing all those stuffy Europeans the twinkly-eyed side of The Great Statesman.

    He’s not funny, and the sooner the press starts embarrassing him instead of stroking him, the sooner he’ll realize it. While he’s mugging for the crowd, decent Americans are dying in a miserable land where they’re not wanted, while some who came there decent Americans are turning into something else that promises problems for America down the road, when they come back. Mr. Vaudeville sent them there, and don’t ever forget it.

  • I think he often has set pieces he delivers as a sort of Pavlovian response to key words he hears in the questions — Anne, @4

    I think Anne’s “nailed it”.

    Bush doesn’t like the word “deadline”, because he usually hears it in reference to Iraq. That might have been the reason he wanted to hear “decline” in Rome. But, once he realised it was about Kosovo not Iraq, it became somewhat palatable, and he used it himself. Then, the next day, he hears “deadline” again and, again, it “rings” louder than “Kosovo” does, so he denies using it. “Deadline” is one of those Pavlov’s signals he receives and reacts to badly.

    There was another instance of what I thought was a “Pavlov reaction”, right after the Katrina disaster. I had a distinct impression, that *all* he heard then was “Gulf”. He stumbled and mumbled until “Gulf recovery” was mentioned. Immediately, the learnt lines fell into place, and he pulled the standard “stay the course” without any trouble at all. It was, of course, a totally different “Gulf” that was being discussed at the time, but his mind wasn’t able to deal with that.

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