{"id":1595,"date":"2004-04-15T12:44:20","date_gmt":"2004-04-15T17:44:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/1595.html"},"modified":"2004-04-15T12:44:20","modified_gmt":"2004-04-15T17:44:20","slug":"final-thought-on-bushs-press-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/final-thought-on-bushs-press-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"Final thought on Bush’s press conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is probably a day late, but I had one final thought in reaction to Bush’s prime-time press conference<\/a> on Tuesday. I’ve already written about my general reaction<\/a> to the event and why it was so disappointing, but something else occurred to me last night.<\/p>\n

The whole press conference may have been a disjointed mess, but this was supposed to be Bush at the top of his game<\/i>.<\/p>\n

The campaign is in full swing and Bush has already made dozens of campaign appearances. His commercials are on the air, he attacks Kerry on the stump, and he’s outlining the reasons he wants a second term.<\/p>\n

So Bush comes back from (yet another) vacation, wants to recapture the spotlight and present himself as a competent, war-time leader. He had plenty of time to get briefed on what to say, prepped for the kinds of questions he’d likely face, told which reporters to call on and when. This was his chance to put his best foot forward before a national television audience.<\/p>\n

This performance, in other words, was Bush at his best<\/i>. And Bush in his finest form gave us:<\/p>\n

* “You know, I just — I’m sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn’t yet.”<\/p>\n

* “And they were happy — they’re not happy they’re occupied. I wouldn’t be happy if I were occupied either.”<\/p>\n

* “He was a threat because he funded suiciders.”
\n
\nAnd those are just the verbal oddities; Bush at his best couldn’t offer any specifics about policy either. He has a plan for Iraq but couldn’t tell us what it is. He’ll hand over power in Iraq on June 30 but can’t tell us to whom. He’ll hold Cheney’s hand during his 9\/11 testimony but can’t tell us why. He’s pretty sure he’s made a mistake at some point, but he can’t name any.<\/p>\n

During the 2000 campaign, Bush’s supporters shrugged off his inabilities by noting he was inexperienced. In the early years of his presidency, his foibles were excused because he was a rookie. Now Bush has been the leader of the free world four almost four years. When he’s well-rested and thoroughly-prepped, he hosts a press conference in which he can’t answer any questions and lacks command of every issue?<\/p>\n

Bush at his very best is still a terrible embarrassment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is probably a day late, but I had one final thought in reaction to Bush’s prime-time press conference on Tuesday. I’ve already written about my general reaction to the event and why it was so disappointing, but something else occurred to me last night. The whole press conference may have been a disjointed mess, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}