fridgemagnet

Bush's speech is on WHYY, though it wasn't on the Yahoo TV schedule for some reason, and people are asking him reasonably aggressive questions (though not amazingly vicious ones or ones that ask about specifics, and they're not following up on the responses, not that they can since they're only being given one question each it appears).

The man really is not performing very well. His dad was better. He's stammering and waffling... he really doesn't deal well with these situations, and it's not surprising they keep him out of them as much as possible, though I suspect this one was unavoidable. For public speaking he's much more optimised towards speeches, with short sentences. With pauses between them. That sound authoritative. And firm. "We must remain. Steadfast and strong. That's what they want us to do. They want us to leave."

Whenever someone asks him a question here he waffles for a bit, with some embarrassing gaps and "er"s - the pauses are a liability at this stage, they start to slip into the sentences themselves - then he gradually goes into rhetorical mode. There's no full-length speech that he can use, so he has to put together several chunks and hope that they fit, which they usually don't, but that's standard political interview technique, not answering the question, it's not unique to him and he's at least competent once he gets to that stage. (It's a little jarring when he sandwiches two entirely inappropriate chunks though.)

It's odd, because people say he can be quite witty and sharp unscripted, but I suppose this isn't the sort of unscripted occasion that he favours. He may be great at joking with reporters but when they ask him questions it appears that the soundbite/vacuous homily generator takes a while to start up each time.

Someone's just asked him for an apology, but I suspect he's not going to give one. Let's see. He's sorry that it happened - well yeah, so are most people - he's talking about having comforted the families... ah! It's important to remember that it was Osama bin Laden's fault. And next question. Well, who thought he would, really?

This is not an enlightening experience and I think I might go to bed now. Oh, the final question is a good one... "you've been giving a lot of speeches, they've all been pretty similar to each other... do you feel you've failed in any way (as a communicator)?" "Make America more secure. And the world more free. And the world more peaceful. It's a conviction deep in my soul." And so on. "One thing that's for sure about me is when I say something. I mean it."

It's not like it matters. Who watches these things? I'd have been better off with the Gilmore Girls; less predictable, better acting, more telling questions asked.