Last night, under intense political pressure, George Bush confronted the news cameras and the American people in the third such conference of his term. His performance, if we were to rate his content and delivery, was dismal. The overall impression he gave was of a man with nothing to say but what had been drilled into his head by someone else. It was an embarrassing, pitiful sight, wholly unfitting the leader of the free world.
For the first quarter hour, Bush read directly from prepared text, demonstrating once again the rigidity of his positions and his inability to either admit any mistakes or to learn from them. Obviously written by others, this initial speech at least presented coherent thoughts in a well-organized format; in other words, it was possible to understand what he was saying.The second phase of the press conference consisted of fifteen questions from national journalists. The questions were probing, and often blunt. Had George Bush had the capacity and the will to answer them coherently, the country would have learned quite a lot about his plans for the future of Iraq. Instead, we got obfuscations and digressions. We got the same sound bites we have heard endlessly on multiple occasions: We will stay the course. We will stand our ground. I have done nothing wrong. I will not apologize.
Without exception, Bush failed to answer even the most straightforward questions. It was, indeed, a pitiful, embarrassing sight to watch the president of the United States showing no more ability to express himself than the average nine year old.When asked if he felt a sense of personal responsibility for the attacks of September 11, he said, "I feel incredibly grieved when I meet with family members. And I do quite frequently. I grieve for, you know, the incredible loss of life that they feel, the emptiness they feel." And when asked if the American people deserve an apology from him, he said, "Hmmm. Look, I can understand why people in my administration are anguished over the fact that people lost their life."
Amazingly, when Bush was asked about his biggest mistake after 9/11 and what he had learned from it, he could imagine absolutely nothing: "Hmmm. I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it."Finally, Bush was asked if he thought he had failed as a communicator, and he said, "Gosh, I don't know."
Well, we know. George Bush has not only failed as a communicator, he has demonstrated very clearly his lack of compassion, his unwillingness to admit wrong doing, and the rigidity of his policies. We saw, in this press conference, a wooden, incoherent man who seems incapable of self reflection or critical thought, hardly the kind of man who should be leading us in perilous times. More at:www.thousandreasons.org/opinion/041404.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8972-2004Apr13.html
http://www.bayoubuzz.com/articles.aspx?aid=1458 (did this guy watch the same performance by the Yale & Havard graduate that even Pravda grades as superbly evasive and misleading? I think George B Sr. ought demand for a refund on the boy's tuition at the least.)
http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/98/387/12515_Bush.html
Finally, here is the transcript of this embarrassment from UK's Financial Times:FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar � get it now! -------------------------------------------- This service is hosted on the Infocom network http://www.infocom.co.ug
