Soapbox

He’s still gonna go with the Sammy Sosa thing

George Bush last night held only the 3rd prime-time press conference of his presidency. One might wonder why a man who can speak at 52 fund-raisers in 9 months has time for so few press conferences, but after a few minutes of viewing it soon became clear why.

If you missed the event, just picture a deer in the headlights.

Politicians always have so-called “talking points” that they try to stress in any question and answer period. I remember being annoyed in the 2000 campaing that Al Gore could find a way to fit the phrase “social security in a lock-box” into the answer to a question about education, for crying out loud. So the fact that the President had certain stock phrases he kept going back to was in itself, no indictment of the man.

But last night, Bush was just amazing. Watching him was like looking at a car wreck: it was terrible, yet you couldn’t look away. He hemmed and hawed, pursed his lips and tried to look thoughtful. He ducked, dodged, shifted the blame, condemned terroristm, praised the troops and did everything but point up into the sky and shout “Look! A flying monkey!” to get out of answering questions. No matter what the question, the answer went something like this:

“Well…umm…let me tell you…blah blah war on terrorism…stay the course…blah blah standing firm…liberate the people of Iraq…next question.”

The press gave him a few tough questions but didn’t hold his feet to the fire when he failed to answer any of them. Bush was repeatedly given the opportunity to make a statement accepting responsibility, personally or generally as commander-in-chief, for any short-comings of the government prosecution of the war in Iraq or the intelligence failures before 9/11. He never did. After a 5 minute, rambling statement that had nothing to do with the actual question “Do you feel your administration bears any responsibility…?” I wanted one of the reporters to just say “So… that’s a “no” then, is it?”

The most amazing moment of the night was when he was reminded that in his first campaign, when asked what he considered his biggest mistake, he said “trading Sammy Sosa” After 3 years in office, what would he now say was his biggest mistake or regret?

Bush gave a weak laugh and made a quip about wishing the question was submitted in advance so he could prepare. And then there was silence.

And more silence…crickets singing…people yawning…paint drying.

“I’m sure something will pop into my head eventually” he said after an embarassingly long pause, but nothing ever did. Nothing.

Nobody was asking the man to fall on his sword, just to put aside his incredible moral certitude for one second and say, “Yeah, if I had this to do over again, I would have~ insert item here.” One thing that he would do differently, and he drew a complete blank.

Such incredible hubris is a scary thing.

Just off the top of my head, and ignoring the obvious answer (which was ‘running for president’), I could come up with a dozen little mistakes he could own up to without admitting to being a total screw-up. How about ‘I regret relying too heavily on un-confirmed intelligence about weapons of mass destruction’? Or maybe it was not sending in the troops initially at the strength that the military themselves recommended, or failing to prevent wide-spread looting in Iraq? Maybe he could have said that he wished he had been more forceful in insisting that the FBI investigate rumors of al Qaida activity in the US? How about regretting alienating the United Nations so much that now we couldn’t pay them to come in and clean up our mess in Iraq?

I can only guess what the citizens of our allied nations (what few we have left) must have thought when they saw the press conference. It was, frankly, an international embarassment. Our president couldn’t pull 3 coherant thoughts together in a row, but he has the nuclear launch codes. If that doesn’t cause terror, you aren’t thinking straight. And this man claims to be the leader of the free world and wants Americans to re-elect him in order to keep the world safe from terrorism. If he is re-elected, I think the U.N. should declare him a weapon of mass destruction and demand that America disarm.