Andrew Sullivan wrote up an analysis of the President's appearance on Meet The Press for The New Republic. I have to agree with what Sullivan says:
I'm not one of those who believes that a good president has to have the debating skills of a Tony Blair or the rhetorical facility of Bill Clinton. I cannot help liking the president as a person. I still believe he did a great and important thing in liberating Iraq (although we have much, much more to do). But, if this is the level of coherence, grasp of reality, and honesty that is really at work in his understanding of domestic fiscal policy, then we are in even worse trouble than we thought. We have a captain on the fiscal Titanic who thinks he's in the Caribbean.
Personally, I watched the interview as well, and I thought Bush was very repetitive in the first segment, regarding the war in Iraq. He appeared to be trying to change what he told America after the fact. He told us that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and that's why we had to invade. Now he says that Saddam had the potential to make weapons of mass destruction, and that's why we had to invade. Can I found a Moveon.org, so I can stop hearing about Weapons of Mass Destruction? Look Bush, just say you screwed up on the WMDs, but we took the guy out anyways, which was still the right thing to do, and now let's move on.
The main thing that bothers me, when I watch Bush speak "off-the-cuff", is what some people call his "smirk". Bush pauses every time he works in a phrase or sentence that he's been fed by his advisors. Then he gets a tiny smile on his face, like the kid who just spelled "Onomatopoeia" right in the school spelling bee. It's like he's proud of himself for getting it right, and pauses to congratulate himself mentally for managing to stay on message, and to give us, the audience, the chance to appreciate what a smart guy he is, afterall. It almost looks to me like he's verbally timid, and is seeking approval on what he just said before he continues.
Now, I wasn't going to vote for Bush, regardless of what he said, but he certainly didn't win himself any converts with his interview, and while I was pessimistic about the chances of replacing Bush in the fall, I'm starting to feel like the Democrats have a pretty good chance of taking back the White House afterall.
