Mr. Bush's vague and sometimes nearly incoherent answers suggested that he was either bedazzled by his administration's own mythmaking or had decided that doubts about his foreign and domestic policies could best be parried by ignoring them.
Mr. Bush will simply not engage the issue of whether his administration exaggerated the Iraqi threat in the months leading up to the American invasion. When asked whether the United States had lost credibility with the rest of the world since neither weapons of mass destruction nor a strong Al Qaeda connection had been uncovered in Iraq, the president veered off into a tour through American history and the difficulty of coming up with an Iraqi version of Thomas Jefferson. He then skidded to a halt with the announcement that 'I'm confident history will prove the decision we made to be the right decision.'
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Given the rambling non-answers the president gave to questions about Iraq and the economy, it was interesting to hear how focused he was when someone asked how, with no opponent, he planned to spend $170 million or more on the primary. "Just watch me," Mr. Bush said concisely. There is one area in which the president's thinking is crystal clear.
Unemployment Drops, Jobs Decline, Labor Force Declines
There's good news and bad news. The good news it that the unemployment rate has dropped to 6.2%. The bad news is that the unemployment rate drop is entirely driven by people dropping out of the labor force and giving-up ever finding a job.
Last month Elaine Chao said that the rising unemployment number was a good thing because it was driven by people, drawn to renewed economic opportunities, re-entering the labor force. I'm sure this month she'll interpret people dropping out of the labor force as a good thing as well.
Bush, in his news conference, said the unemployment is due to the lack-of-skills of job-seekers. Not so Mr. President, for all the U.S. companies that are now shifting high- wage work overseas, especially to India. By way of InstaPundit, here's more on outsourcing the "good" jobs. We are so screwed.
WASHINGTON -- The nation's unemployment rate declined to 6.2 percent in July as nearly half a million discouraged Americans stopped looking for a job. Payrolls were cut for the sixth month in a row, suggesting that businesses remain cautious and want to keep work forces leans despite budding signs of an economic revival.
The Labor Department's report Friday pained a picture of a job market that remains stubbornly sluggish and continues to frustrate people looking for work.
The economy lost 44,000 jobs in July. While that's an improvement from the 72,000 shed in June, economists were hoping that positions would actually be added. They were forecasting payrolls to go up by around 10,000.
Although the jobless rate dipped to a two-month low of 6.2 percent from a nine-year high of 6.4 percent in June, much of decline's July represented the exodus of 470,000 discouraged people who abandoned job searches because they believed no jobs were available.
