The media is covering that flub up, whenever they air Helen's questioning him, they cut the clip off before he let's it slip. Then they hype him as taking "tough questions" "Helen's a liberal journalist", yadda, yadda, yadda...

Speaking of those debates, I have to admit, I still believe he has his answers piped in through an earpiece..especially when he uses delaying tactics like we saw today.

I was also suprised by how easy the reporters were on him.  I only caught a bit of the press conference, but the part I heard went like this:

Reporter: <insert detailed question here>

Bush: <insert canned response tangentially related to detailed question>

Reporter: <insert totally different detailed question here>

...

One question I heard was whether Bush was worried about rising interest rates.  Bush's response was an amazing list of platitudes: "we have a very strong economy", "we want people to have jobs", "our economy is great" etc.

He never once mentioned interest rates in his response.  His only nod to the actual question was to claim that "he didn't want to get into microeconomics".  It was pretty clear that he didn't mean microeconomics in the technical sense.

There would have been so many great followup questions:

"President Bush, you were just asked about interest rates.  Why don't you answer the question?"

"President Bush, do you even know what microeconomics is?"

"President Bush, what does your incoherent, rambling response have to do with interest rates?" 

Well, marydem, to err is human, to forgive, divine...and all that stuff; but I have a grandson sched to deploy to Iraq in the next few weeks, and, given the fact that most of the 'cannon fodder' has come from the lower and middle-class economic levels, I can understand the pointed suggestion that our C-in-C might feel the utmost pain and develope a certain empathy if one of his own flesh and blood had come home in a casket to Dover AFB.

Perhaps it would sharpen his sense of the failure of his grab for the oil in Iraq...

And speaking of 'Freudian slips', think of the revelation in General Abizaid's recent remark, "If Civil War does develope, we should leave enough troops to guard the OIL FIELDS and pipelines, and withdraw the rest of them and let the Iraqis fight it out."  Does that not say that our prime concern in Iraq is the OIL?

John Murtha is the only official voice I've heard lately that makes any sense at all RE the Iraq debacle; and I would support an even quicker exit than he suggests.

I do not reveal this personal info to grab any claim as a 'hero'...but having fought in three major battles in the Pacific in WW II (Okinawa was the last), I resent accusations of cowardice or un-patriotism from some of these chicken-hawks who urge on the fight in Iraq...as long as they or theirs are never in harms way.  By the way, I was a volunteer, not a draftee, in that long-ago war.

In short, the guy who fled into a Texas ANG unit because such outfits were then exempt from foreign combat areas, who checked the 'NO' box on his application to the question, "Do you volunteer to serve in SE Asia (Vietnam)", and who is still almost certain to have gone A.W.O.L from his 'duty station' in wartime, is, perhaps due for a little of the Real sorrow and personal loss that ALL wars bring.

His qualifications to serve in his present post are, at the very least, badly tarnished, whether one labels him a coward and a liar (which he is) or not.

"Microeconomics" -- that's when you go into more detail than: "Tax cuts good. Deficits don't matter."

And that's why I went into Iraq -- hold on for a second --

Hold on for a second for what?  Is it so you can understand what they are telling you to say through your ear piece or maybe a brain chip?

What a pathetic performance! 

Ironically, I think the administration's habit of telling so many lies helps them here.  The press corps is so numb to the lies they probably don't even notice them anymore.  The answer highlighted in this piece is filled with so many lies, it's hard to know where to begin.  One thing that was cut off in that answer in this post is the part where Bush says Saddam wouldn't let weapons inspectors in.

The consensus on the nightly news circuit last night was that Bush put Ms. Thomas in her place during the news conference.  This is a noble yet failed attempt at "spinning" what actually happened.

I think that is what Gettysburg was saying too; that the MSM spun it in favor of Bush but that they didn't fool anyone.  But then he said that the spin was noble.  Whaaaa?

Jan Knaus

I just can't understand how the same press that took such glee in reporting every single "fact" they could dig up about the last president's personal life, no matter how bad it made that president look, now finds it their patriotic duty to shield all of us from the knowledge that we have a clueless boob as  president, and it has cost tens of thousands of lives, ruined our country's reputation, made  us far less safe from terrorism, ruined our economy, and is well on the way to destroying our Constitution.  The contrast is beyond belief.

Hoppy in Sacramento

Bush is the symbolic joke of the human race.

Tom

Larry, I disagree with your take on this.  Bush is simply drawing up the old tape about how to talk about Iraq.  He cannot answer Thomas' question improvisationally, so he has to draw up the careful words-we went into Afghanistan to get the enemy, and I saw Iraq as a threat also.  It is the same plausible deniability that let him say the other day that he never said Saddam was responsible for 9/11.  The only place he has fallen on this carefully constructed rhetoric in an explicit fashion is in the letter he had to submit to Congress within 48 hours of initiating the Iraq war.  There he had to put out the idea that there was a link to 9/11.  ThinkProgress astutely picked up on this point, and even earlier, John Dean did.  I think Dean is right--the knowing falsehood in that letter represents an impeachable offense.  But the show against Thomas--that was just replaying the old tape.  He knows nothing else. 

I distinctly remember during the debates his blurting out during his answer to a question "Now don't interupt me" when everybody was just sitting there staring at him.

dc

Daniel

Most Washington press corps' do go light on sitting presidents.  I would wager that it has something to do with their fear of being fired from such a prestigious post, but I could be wrong.  There are, of course, exceptions.  David Gregory for one and Helen Thomas as well--both of whom are notoriously liberal and have been hostile to George W. Bush since his election in 2000.  The media as a whole, however, certainly has a liberal bias--primarily network news and newspapers.  This is slightly offset by the conservative dominated AM talk radio and the seemingly ubiquitous Fox News Channel.  But every news channel from CNN, ABC, NBC, and certainly CBS set their agenda not necessarily toward the Democratic platform, but certainly in a light that emphasizes (not merely reports) Bush's failures.  For his part, Bush is not (and has never been) particularly interested in playing the media "game."  President Clinton was remarkable at doing it and the stark contrast between he and the current president is fairly remarkable--comparable to the black/white change from Carter to Reagan (all four of whom contained excess amounts of hot air). 

I don't know, Jan.  Gettysburg's statement is either accidentally or cleverly ambiguous.  How do we know if "this" in "This is a noble yet failed..." doesn't refer to Larry's post and our comments?

"It depends what you mean by "this"."

I've been reading quite a few quotes coming from the right that claim Bush really put Helen in her place.  We need to revist the Blind priests and the Elephant parable: 

...the priest who felt the trunk said "an elephant is like a great snake" and the priest who felt the elephant's leg said "no, it is like a tree."  However, the Blind Republican priest (who always insisted that he had intimate knowledge of elephants) felt the elephant's anus and declared "You're all wrong...an elephant is like a warm talking-point."

Neoboho

The Media is guilty is cutting off this statement then how is it that Larry knows about it?

Perhaps (a) by having heard the live broadcast of the press conference or (b) having read the official transcript.

It's true -- I tried to find that exchange to quote from it before the official transcript was released, but none of the news accounts actually quoted it.  Some mentioned that Bush had defended his invasion of Iraq in answer to "tough questioning" from Helen Thomas, but none of them at that point were offering any extended quoting from that exchange.

Now: that may only have been in the interest of brevity and getting the basic story out quickly.  And I don't watch a lot of broadcast news, so I can't speak to what snippits got put on the nightly news spots.  But it was very frustrating to have heard this revealing exchange in the course of the live broadcast and then not be able to find anything but very abbreviated mention of it in the press accounts.

Something else I never heard mentioned in the mainstream press: That question was the first time the president has called on Helen Thomas in three years (which explains her half-joking "You're going to be sorry..." remark before asking her question). 

And wasn't her that first said Bush was the Worst President Ever?

That was Helen Thomas, all right.  I remember thinking at the time that she was showing signs of losing it in her old age, but I realize now that she just saw things a little more clearly than many of the rest of us, because it turned out she was absolutely right.

For his part, Bush is not (and has never been) particularly interested in playing the media "game." 

Well, I have to agree with you partially on that one.  This was his second press conference in 2006.  He usually only talks to those who have been carefully screened, and any dissenters are thrown out (or as Cindy Sheehan, arrested). 

But that is its own form of media "game."  He gets photographed speaking to adoring crowds, who give him hard questions like, "Gee Mr. President, have you always been brilliant, or did you have to work at it?"  And it all goes out on the airways as "news." 

That is a REAL media game, and he plays us all for suckers every time he does it.

Jan Knaus

I was referring to continued covering of yesterday's press conference today on MSNBC, which was airing while I was reading this thread earlier today. It seemed like a puff piece intended to give the impression (to those who they assume might not have watched it.. especially since it was aired in it's entirety when most people are in work, at least that's what I think) that Bush handled it with good humor (lot's of emphasis on the laughs from the press corps.), took "tough questions", and as I posted, re: Helen's question, they cut off his answer before he makes the Iraq flub, they refer to him having to ask her to let him finish answering her, then include the obligatory "Helen's a liberal journalist, etc.. " to sort of write her off.

Of course the Daily Show and others that are interested in reporting the truth, you'd get the entire thing, I wasn't trying to imply that there was a mass cover up, I was referring to what I saw. I did watch the entire press conference on Tuesday.

It is funny you mention straw men, since that was the other thing that struck me about the President.  His responses were full of really silly straw men:

"Many people, mostly democrats, don't want to spread democracy."

"I don't understand why people are arguing that freedom is bad"

I really don't like to accuse the president of being stupid, because I think it is taking the easy way out.  But I know middle schoolers who are apparently able to discuss the Iraq war more intelligently than our president. 

Not really close to accurate, Getty.