{"id":8867,"date":"2006-10-25T14:17:06","date_gmt":"2006-10-25T18:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8867.html"},"modified":"2006-10-25T14:17:06","modified_gmt":"2006-10-25T18:17:06","slug":"i-think-i-owe-an-explanation-to-the-american-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/i-think-i-owe-an-explanation-to-the-american-people\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I think I owe an explanation to the American people’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Watching today’s White House press conference<\/a> was a rather frustrating experience. It offered us a classic Bush sampler — featuring dissembling, dishonesty, straw-men arguments, poor grammar, inane talking points, and awkward attempts at friendly banter. It was, in other words, exactly what we’ve come to expect from the president we all know and, well, acknowledge.<\/p>\n

Some early reports indicate that the event was an hour long. It wasn’t — Bush started at 12:30, but before he would take any questions, he proceeded to deliver a 16-minute speech about how great his new plan for Iraq is (despite all evidence to the contrary<\/a>). Explaining later why he read the remarks, the president said, “I think I owe an explanation to the American people.”<\/p>\n

He does? That’s great! Many of us have been waiting for years<\/em> for the president to offer the nation an explanation, and as of this morning, the president believes we deserve one.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, as Dan Froomkin noted<\/a>, Bush managed to go the entire event without actually getting to the “explanation” that he owes us.<\/p>\n

Bush didn’t have much new to say today, other than endorsing yesterday’s already largely debunked announcement in Baghdad of a “new plan” that sounds very much like the old plan.<\/p>\n

And after an hour of familiar sound bites, the public would be forgiven for feeling it still hasn’t gotten that explanation he promised.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Looking back over the transcript<\/a>, it’s hard to see a single instance in which Bush answered a question.
\n
\nThis, for example, seemed like a good question: “You’ve said that you’re expecting [the Maliki government] to make tough decisions. Can you tell the American people how you plan to measure his success in reaching those benchmarks, and what happens if he doesn’t hit those benchmarks?” Bush wouldn’t answer it.<\/p>\n

Here was another: “Does the United States want to maintain permanent bases in Iraq? And I would follow that by asking, are you willing to renounce a claim on permanent bases in Iraq?” Still, nothing but vague talking points and meandering rhetoric.<\/p>\n

And another: “Given that the war in Iraq is not going as well as you want, and given that you’re not satisfied as you just told us today, why hasn’t anybody been held accountable? Should somebody be held accountable?” Bush mentioned how capable Donald Rumsfeld is and moved on.<\/p>\n

Some press conferences are dominated by softball questions that seem to almost intentionally miss the point. Today, the press corps had solid, pertinent questions — nice job, especially since the White House only gave reporters an hour’s notice before the event — but the president was either unwilling or incapable of answering them.<\/p>\n

Worse, the answers frequently veered into the bizarre. Towards the end, a reporter asked, “Is the coming election a referendum on Iraq? Should it be?” Bush hedged a bit before saying, “I understand here in Washington, some people say we’re not at war.” Really? Who would that be?<\/p>\n

Honestly, I’m convinced that the president is getting less coherent and less articulate as time goes on. Watching today’s press conference reminded me of the old joke about seeing a turtle on top of a fence post: you know the turtle didn’t get there by himself, you know he doesn’t belong there, he can’t get anything done while he’s up there, and you just want to help get the poor thing down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Watching today’s White House press conference was a rather frustrating experience. It offered us a classic Bush sampler — featuring dissembling, dishonesty, straw-men arguments, poor grammar, inane talking points, and awkward attempts at friendly banter. It was, in other words, exactly what we’ve come to expect from the president we all know and, well, acknowledge. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8867","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8867\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}