President Bush: <\/STRONG><\/B>Well, but what
\nwasn’t wrong was the fact that he had the ability to make a weapon. That wasn’t
\nright.<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n<\/P>
\n
Huh? Let’s just call it the war context of no context, which our
\nMaximum Leader kept insisting on. He cocked his head like a bantam rooster and moved
\nhis lips like a sock puppet. This is considered “presidential”? <\/P>
\n
Equally rotten, the news media are treating the interview as news<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> instead
\nof the joke it in fact is<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A>. This pretense — that the
\npresident actually said something of value — is one more confirmation that the United States is
\nbeing turned into a Banana Republic.<\/P>
\nPostscript:<\/B> Glad to see Peggy Noonan’s commentary<\/B>:<\/FONT><\/EM> <\/A>“The president
\nseemed tired, unsure and often bumbling. His answers were repetitive, and when he tried to clarify
\nthem he tended to make them worse. He did not seem prepared. He seemed in some way
\ndisconnected from the event.” She also noticed something very important about the transcript of
\nthe interview: “It reads better than it played.” I was struck by that myself. The transcript almost
\nmakes him seem coherent.<\/P>
\nIt’s also nice to see that somebody besides me thought Tim Russert did a lousy job. Here’s David Corn<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A> in The Nation: “In his Oval Office,
\nhour-long session with Bush, he repeatedly let Bush slide or elide. The few tough queries
\nproduced the predictable replies from Bush. And then Russert did not come back with the obvious
\nfollow-ups. … Instead, Russert allowed Bush to dish out the all-too familiar, White
\nHouse-approved rhetoric. It pains me to say, he was more enabler than interrogator.”<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This morning’s “Meet the Press” on NBC should have been called “Meet the President.” If only Tim Russert had said: “Yes, Mr. President, but you didn’t answer the question.” The first exchange set the tone for all the rest: Russert: On Friday, you announced a committee, commission to look into intelligence failures regarding the Iraq war […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-8i","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}