And the Angels are leading the M's 7-4 after being down 4-0. A good night if you don't count the weepy creepy performance of President Quiverlips.
Now, look - let's not kid ourselves. Predictably, his Kool-Aid suckers are gonna look at this as a high point of his public persona, displaying a caring, loving and emphatic leader. Hannity will no doubt be squirting all over his studio tomorrow about how heroic Bush was to face the tough questioning with soft-spoken bravery etc. etc. etc.
Meanwhile, sites like this one will be critical of his faux blubbering and his relentless filibustering of just about every question. But to me, the heresy is how Bush has completely ruined the spectator sport of the press conference.
This guy takes the tradition of the slam-bang free-for-all media blitz and damn near turns it into a somber prayer vigil. These things used to be fun. Now they're just depressing. Quiverlips ratched up his forlorn routine to new heights tonight, sucking all the life out of the room and filling it with shockingly bad acting.
His 17-minute opening monologue was a stark contrast to his wacky "Where are those WMDs?" routine at the correspondents' dinner a couple of weeks ago. I felt he should have opened with that bit tonight to show the world his sincerity, but he went dour instead.
It was a shameless display of dewey-eyed salesmanship of a miserably failed military action, and by the time the questions flew, the party was dead in the water.
I did relish the moment when he accidentally fielded an unscreened question about what he felt was his biggest mistake post-9/11. Homina homina homina homina homina. Apparently whoever was talking into his earpiece was thrown for a loop, too. But don't take my word for it. Enjoy the transcript:
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.What in the blue HELL was he talking about? He fell back so hard on his talking points, you can see the crater where his podium was. Mighty slow on your tail there, Beelzebub.
In the last campaign, you were asked a question about the biggest mistake you’d made in your life, and you used to like to joke that it was trading Sammy Sosa.
You’ve looked back before 9/11 for what mistakes might have been made. After 9/11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have learned from it?
BUSH: I wish you’d have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it.
John, I’m sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could’ve 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 answer, but it hadn’t yet.
I would’ve gone into Afghanistan the way we went into Afghanistan. Even knowing what I know today about the stockpiles of weapons, I still would’ve called upon the world to deal with Saddam Hussein.
See, I’m of the belief that we’ll find out the truth on the weapons. That’s why we sent up the independent commission. I look forward to hearing the truth as to exactly where they are. They could still be there. They could be hidden, like the 50 tons of mustard gas in a turkey farm.
One of the things that Charlie Duelfer talked about was that he was surprised of the level of intimidation he found amongst people who should know about weapons and their fear of talking about them because they don’t want to be killed.
You know, there’s this kind of — there’s a terror still in the soul of some of the people in Iraq.
They’re worried about getting killed, and therefore they’re not going to talk. But it’ll all settle out, John. We’ll find out the truth about the weapons at some point in time.
However, the fact that he had the capacity to make them bothers me today just like it would have bothered me then. He’s a dangerous man. He’s a man who actually not only had weapons of mass destruction — the reason I can say that with certainty is because he used them.
And I have no doubt in my mind that he would like to have inflicted harm, or paid people to inflict harm, or trained people to inflict harm, on America, because he hated us.
I hope — I don’t want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I’m confident I have. I just haven’t — you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I’m not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one.
He also mentioned "suiciders," thereby officially being the first person to turn a noun into a verb since people started "summering" in the Hamptons last year. We also need to be aware of a "shadowy network of folks" - I'm guessing he meant Fox News, but I could be wrong.
As for June 30th, Bush repeated his pledge to turn the Iraq government over to caller 10, along with the new Jackson Browne CD boxed set. He also was asked if he'd offer an apology to the 9/11 victims' families. Bush said that bin Laden should be the one apologizing. Okay. We'll look for that in his next Al Jazeera video. Thanks a pantload.
So basically, this ended up being a campaign special for Team Bush which hogged up an hour of every TV network known to mankind, including Animal Planet and seven pay-per-view channels. The best news was that Bush is betting his re-election on the outcome of Iraq.
Unfortunately for him, America plans not to cover that bet. But thanks for playing our game. Pick up your parting gifts January 20th on your way out.
Oh, and the Angels won their home opener tonight, 7-5.
