Bush on film flubbing yet another question

Just one of many that prove Bush can think on his feet. The man is a comedians dream and a nations nightmare.

He starting to look like Rumsfeld.

Only not quite as poetic.

Thank you for the laugh.

up, thanks for the laugh! Plus there's a lot more funny stuff on that page! www.kontraband.com

I love how Bush, even though he has NO IDEA what he's talking about, gives his answer with that "Well, what I'm saying is OBVIOUSLY true" attitude
He even throws in that little "pause" to make it seem like what he said needs a moment to be absorbed (which is right when the audience laughs, because what he said is so obviously idiotic).

Anyway, it feels like something is missing here... oh, thats right. The conservatives who feel they have to defend Bush on everything he does. Those should be interesting to read, if anyone is actually going to try it...

Bush has shown, repeatedly, that he cannot form intelligible answers to unanticipated questions. Who can forget his response to a reporter's question, asking him what he thought his biggest mistake might have been:

I wish you would have given me this written question ahead of time, so I could plan for it. (Laughter.) John, I'm sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could have done it better this way, or that way. 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 an answer, but it hadn't yet.

(for the sake of completeness, it should be noted that nothing popped into his head during the remainder of the press conference).

Clearly, Bush prefers questions that he can answer. Like simple questions. Asked by his supporters.

On the Road, Bush Fields Softballs From the Faithful
(NY Times: requires registration)
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

Published: August 16, 2004

His father loved them, Richard Nixon started them and President Bush has turned them into the near-daily warm bath of his re-election campaign.

Last week alone, in Virginia, Florida, New Mexico and Oregon, Mr. Bush had four "Ask President Bush'' question-and-answer sessions with rapt Republican audiences. The week before he had one in Columbus, Ohio, and this week he has one scheduled for St. Croix, Wis.

As anyone who has sat through the 90-minute forums knows, the questions are not hand grenades that detonate onto the evening news. Take, for example, one of the first queries at the "Ask President Bush'' session in Beaverton, Ore., on Friday:

"I'm wondering if I can get some inauguration tickets?''

Or consider this from Albuquerque on Wednesday:

"Can I introduce my mother and mother-in-law, who are new citizens to this country?''

Many times the questions aren't even questions at all. Exhibit A might be these words from an audience member in Niceville, Fla., on Tuesday:

"I'm 60 years old and I've voted Republican from the very first time I could vote. And I also want to say this is the very first time that I have felt that God was in the White House.''

"Thank you,'' Mr. Bush replied, to applause.

Bush campaign officials tell reporters at every "Ask President Bush'' forum that the questions are not planted and that the sessions are spontaneous. Senator John Kerry's campaign officials say the events are too ridiculous to be believed.

Whatever the case, Bush campaign officials readily say that they carefully screen the crowds by distributing tickets through campaign volunteers. "Our supporters hand them out to other supporters and people who may be undecided,'' said Scott Stanzel, a campaign spokesman.

The result is often a love-in with heavily Christian crowds. Mr. Bush relaxes, shows off his humor and appears more human than in his sometimes tongue-tied and tense encounters with the press. He clearly relishes the sessions: As of this coming Wednesday in Wisconsin, Mr. Bush will have had 12 such campaign forums, which is one less than the number of solo news conferences he has had in three and a half years in the White House.

Of course, reporters write that the events are canned, but campaign officials care only about the lively snippets of Mr. Bush that get on the local news.

"I'm also proud to be traveling with John McCain,'' Mr. Bush said to applause in Albuquerque, where he appeared with the Republican senator from Arizona after having him as an overnight guest at the presidential ranch. "Nothing better than waking up in the country and getting a cup of coffee and getting in the pickup truck and driving around and looking at the cows. That's what John and I did this morning. It's a good way to clear your mind and keep your perspective.''

Softballs aside, there have been a number of times when audience members asked substantive questions, like the woman in Florida with a brother on his way to Iraq who wanted to know if Mr. Bush had a plan for the American mission there. In Annandale, Va., a man asked Mr. Bush to comment on the nuclear threat from Iran, while another asked about relations between China and Taiwan.

But so far, Mr. Bush has fielded nothing close to the occasional tough question that his father got at his own "Ask George Bush'' sessions. In January 1988, during the Republican primary campaign, aggressive students at a high school in West Des Moines asked Vice President Bush about his role in the Iran-contra scandal. Six months earlier at an "Ask George Bush'' session in Canton, S.D., Mr. Bush was confronted by the brother of an American engineer killed in Nicaragua.

Bill Clinton also fielded the occasional hardball in his question-and-answer events. In a two-hour live call-in appearance on the CBS program "This Morning'' during the 1992 campaign, Mr. Clinton was whacked with this from an educator in Wisconsin: "From all the reports of your marital problems, et cetera, I'd like you to convince me that you would take the presidential oath seriously.''

When Nixon's aides started the format during the 1968 campaign as a way to loosen up the candidate, little was left to chance. As recounted in the book "The Selling of the President'' by Joe McGinniss, Nixon's aides requested specific help from Illinois in recruiting six people for a televised question-and-answer panel.

"They should be reasonably attractive, white - representative of the average middle-class voter,'' reads a memorandum included in Mr. McGinniss's book. Still, the memorandum said the panel did not have to be composed entirely of Nixon supporters: "It's desirable that some of the participants be uncommitted - or leaning in another direction - just so they're not actually hostile.''

Audience hostility at this point is hard to find on the 2004 Bush campaign.

"Mr. President, as a child, how can I help you get votes?'' a youngster asked at the "Ask President Bush'' event in Oregon on Friday.

"Thank you,'' the president responded. "That is the kind of question I like to hear.''

He's racking up enough for another Moore docucomedy. Using another Bradbury title (which is also copied, incidentally, from classic literature)

"The Golden Flapples of the Son."

"We are trying to get unemployment to go up, and I think we're going to succeed."
-- Ronald Reagan

"It's difficult to believe that people are still starving in this country because food isn't available."
-- Ronald Reagan

However, from the WSJ at the time of his death:

"Today we can see that that is precisely what his Presidency was. Most importantly, he and some fortuitous allies (Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II) rallied the West to renew its moral and military challenge to Communism and to win the Cold War. It is common now to speak of "the fall" of the Berlin Wall. But it did not fall on its own. It was pulled down--literally by the Germans on both sides, metaphorically by Mr. Reagan, who had chipped away at its moral and political foundation. And it did not occur without bloodshed."

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005183

Come on, no Bush lover is going to try to spin this to make it look good?

I'm surprised!

Just, people who claim that Reagan brought down the Berlin wall are not the type given to a critical analysis of the party they favor and it's "leaders."

Just stopping back in because I was starting to have these strange thoughts that maybe Bush is not a complete incompetent.

But after watching that video again, I'm thinking clearly.