Bush Jr. gets no respect. To be honest, his speech wasn’t worth watching anyway. Although, I do have to give Bush credit for getting his speech delivery skills down. He’s just like one of those animatronic robots now. You could put anything in front of him and, by golly, I bet he could sound sincere as hell. I wonder how long he had to practice for it.
Sometimes I do actually feel sorry for Bush. He seems to be in way over his head. He doesn’t seem to possess the same sort of calculated evilness and ruthlessness as his father. He never appears to me to be particularly crafty or intentionally deceitful. I honestly think he believes the ridiculous things he says while I’m certain that the same is not true of the more machiavellian members of the Bush administration, namely Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, et al.
3 Networks Skip Bush’s Talk, Citing Absence of Request:
Other White House officials said privately that if they had asked for coverage, that would have unduly heightened expectations for a speech that had no particularly new or dramatic details. Still, some White House officials indicated that they had hoped the networks would cover the address anyway.
Some network executives said the White House’s decision to leave the choice to the networks put the onus on them — and left them possibly facing negative publicity for choosing not to take a prime-time presidential speech in the face of possible action against Iraq. One executive said the White House approach was “passive aggressive.”
Still, executives at the major networks said they were comfortable with their choices, especially because they had established that the president was planning to generally restate his case against Iraq and was not expected to provide any staggering disclosures. Complicating matters, executives at all of the networks said, was the fact that the president was not speaking from the Oval Office, but from a lectern before a large audience likely to applaud — sure to give his speech the feel of a political event.
I did find it strange that Bush chose to give such a speech at a Republican rally. Did they calculate for the effect of a cheering crowd during the Bush war pitch? Maybe they expected viewers at home to be compelled by cheering from Bush supporters.