Puppet Show and Presidential Press Conference

While Josh Marshall has the most informative comments re: Bush's, um, well it wasn't quite dog and pony show and "press conference" implies answering genuine questions, James Wolcott has the best reaction I've seen thus far--a mixture of yawn and indignation. Noting the lack of the normal enthusiasm bordering on the rabid among Bush's conservative storm troopers the usual conservative suspects, he concludes:

So it's seems evident that Bush didn't persuade or energize anyone last night, and today he's at Falls Church, Va, doing another sales pitch, and I wish someone last night had asked the president if it's really an appropriate use of the Commander in Chief's time and the taxpayers' money to be jetting all around the country fielding softball questions from cherry-picked audiences? It's like a revival tour solely for the already converted--a futile, costly sham.

Indeed.

I watched the show last night--well, the rerun on C-Span, although I heard most of the live version on the radio. While listening, I tried to imagine the various gesticulations common to Australapithocine Dubya and found my recollection more or less accurate upon viewing the video...though, as Wolcott pointed out, this was the subdued, humble dauphin, as opposed to the strutting, preening redneck fratboy with a poltical tomahawk chop. Still, the "answers," if you can dignify them with the term "answer," were typical Bushian half-truths, outright lies, willful (and dangerous) ignorance, wrapped up in a smarmy used car salesman's ouevre...which always makes me wonder why the fuck he's supposedly so popular--and, if he IS so popular, why are his appearances so heavily scripted, a la the town hall meetings--and for that matter, the show last night--and why are they so rare?

Oh, and on the flip side, most of the questions were downright appalling. I recall exactly TWO genuine questions--and neither was followed up on aggressively--an ABC correspondent asked Bush why terrorist attacks were up this past year--after all, Dubya said we were WINNING the war on terror...and the final question of the night (IIRC) asked whether or not Bush would stand for AMERICANS be extraordinarily rendered...neither got a real answer.

However, no one asked the obvious re: Social Security--namely, why are THEIR government securities mere "IOU's" while the same types of commercial paper in other portfolios are "backed by the full faith and credit of the United States," as Bush himself said last night...

And who will finally point out that this particular emperor has no clothes?