Having framed houses for a living for several years early in my
professional life, I can say for sure that Dubya holds his hammer like
a pussy and wears his nail apron backwards. Stingray
WashPost Dana Milbank Link
"Does it worry you," NBC's Matt Lauer is asking him at a
construction-site interview in Louisiana, that prosecutors "seem to
have such an interest in Mr. Rove?"
Bush blinks twice. He touches his tongue to his lips. He blinks twice more. He starts to answer, but he stops himself.
"I'm
not going to talk about the case," Bush finally says after a
three-second pause that, in television time, feels like a commercial
break.
Only the president's closest friends and family know (if
anybody does) what he's really thinking these days, during Katrina
woes, Iraq violence, conservative anger over Harriet Miers, and legal
trouble for Bush's top political aide and two congressional GOP
leaders. Bush has not been viewed up close; as he took his eighth
post-Katrina trip to the Gulf Coast yesterday, the press corps has
accompanied him only once, because the White House says logistics won't
permit it. Even the interview on the "Today" show was labeled "closed
press."
But this much could be seen watching the tape of NBC's
broadcast during Bush's 14-minute pre-sunrise interview, in which he
stood unprotected by the usual lectern. The president was a blur of
blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts. Bush has always been an
active man, but standing with Lauer and the serene, steady first lady,
he had the body language of a man wishing urgently to be elsewhere.
The
fidgeting clearly corresponded to the questioning. When Lauer asked if
Bush, after a slow response to Katrina, was "trying to get a second
chance to make a good first impression," Bush blinked 24 times in his
answer. When asked why Gulf Coast residents would have to pay back
funds but Iraqis would not, Bush blinked 23 times and hitched his
trousers up by the belt.
When the questioning turned to Miers,
Bush blinked 37 times in a single answer -- along with a lick of the
lips, three weight shifts and some serious foot jiggling. Laura Bush,
by contrast, delivered only three blinks and stood still through her
entire answer about encouraging volunteerism.
Perhaps the set
itself made Bush uncomfortable. He and his wife stood in casual attire,
wearing tool belts, in front of a wall frame and some Habitat for
Humanity volunteers in hard hats. ABC News noted cheekily of its rival
network's exclusive: "He did allow himself to be shown hammering
purposefully, with a jejune combination of cowboy swagger and yuppie
self-consciousness."
Perhaps, too, the president's body language
said nothing about his true state of mind. But the White House gave
little other information that might shed light on this. A White House
spokesman, Trent Duffy, entered the press cabin on Air Force One to
brief reporters at 1:58 p.m. He left two minutes later, after answering
the only question by saying, "We don't have anything to announce."
[...]
Bush
joked about his state of mind when Lauer asked Laura Bush about the
strain on her husband. "He can barely stand!" the president said,
interrupting. "He's about to drop on the spot." But the first lady had
a calming influence on the presidential wiggles. When Laura Bush spoke
about her husband's "broad shoulders," the president put his arm around
her -- and the swaying and shifting subsided.
The president, now
on more comfortable terrain, delivered a brief homily about "the
decency of others" and "how blessed we are to be an American." Through
the entire passage, he blinked only 12 times.
Did everyone notice how he NEVER answers a question? Lauer asks him why
our citizens have to pay back the rebuilding loan and the Iraqis don't
and he goes off on some tangent about how generous Americans are, blah,
blah, blah (yea, George, we're generous because your government has
decided to write off the poor and needy). He's such a pathetic, foolish
little man. My grandad had a saying (I'm paraphrasing), "I prefer an
evil man to a stupid man." Unlucky for us, George is both.
The
misery this clown and his creatures have brought to our country and the
world is legendary. If Fitzgerald is able to bring them down the
service he will have performed for his country will be of the same
calibre as some of the great patriots in our history. If this long,
hideous nightmare ends and we can go to work restoring our country,
then the lessons learned will serve us well in the future.
