Maybe he does get it...

The irony of most of this rant is fantastic. Omit the references to Palestinians and it's almost like he understands what happened on November 7. The sad part is that, as usual, he fails to respond to the question that was posed.

I hate to admit it, but Bush reminds me a lot of myself. I used to give responses that were nearly identical, at least in form, to those he regurgitates at press conferences. Throughout grade school I made a habit of not doing assigned readings for English class, and frequently I was called on to analyze a chapter or even an entire book that I hadn't read. Of necessity, I became a masterful bullshitter. I would make a great president: restate the question, but so vaguely that it sounds like an affirmative response. Now some filler; litter it with platitudes, especially uplifting ones like "peace is never dead, because people want peace," and other such vacuous verbiage. Restate the question again; differently enough to allow you to get completely off the original topic. More words. Smile. Weave your own narrative, one which may not have anything to do with reality, but which is plausible and internally consistent, and if you act like you're really buying it, other people will too!

There's no need to elaborate on that. I'm sure you know how it goes; we've all fabricated some ridiculous response about critically important foreign policy issues n English assignments, and in any case my BSing prowess is considerably diminished nowadays since I've come to appreciate an honest, well thought-out, to-the-point answer.

I guess that's the great irony of Bush's press conferences; he is so often an accidental prophet. For instance, he once said of Iraq, without even a hint of irony, "There are extreme elements that use religion to achieve objectives." Who knows whether he willfully or inadvertently forgot much of his own constituency when he said that, but he sure nailed it. And in attempting not to answer a tough question about the Middle East nearly a year ago, he actually gave a spot-on assessment of domestic politics today: the people are unhappy with the status quo, they want honest government, better education for their children, health care, and best of all, that "the elections should open the eyes of the Old Guard..." In the Palestinian territories, huh? Wouldn't that be nice.


Update: In conversation, someone had the audacity to dispute that Bush sounds like a high schooler bullshitting his English teacher at his press conferences. A quick Google search shows that about 1/3 of the internet is devoted to disputing whether and how much of an idiot he is, but as for my slightly different point, this sums it up nicely in about 36 seconds.



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