I don’t get the idea that he was softballing Bush. I got the impression he was being a bit deferential because, after all, he’s dealing with the President in the Oval Office. From a purely prudential POV, you don’t go after him on his own turf; it looks very bad if you do.
Given that, he was as hard on him as he could be. Bush was forced to say the same things over and over during the WMD segment, and that looked very bad. The economy segment was also not good at all; Bush came across as a man making lame excuses. Every President inherits something bad economically from his predecessor, and every one has to deal with wacky, unforeseen circumstances. The good ones deal with it; the bad ones make excuses.
Overall, that’s how he came across, as a man making lame excuses, for Iraq and WMD, for the economy, for having a famously divisive effect on the nation’s politics. Russert did a good job under difficult circumstances.
Frankly, though I kind of like the guy, I thought Bush was dismal today.
He looked ill at ease, programmed.
I see this interview as not helpful for Bush. It seemed timed to counter the growing momentum of Kerry’s candidacy, but I don’t think it served him well at all.
That just may be the case with Bush, pantom . . . but the media just didn’t appear all that deferential with Presidential Clinton.
In any case, it’s incredibly frustrating to hear the same canned, prepared lines over and over again. Especially from a president that quivers at the thought of facing 83 year old Helen Thomas and the rest of the White House press corps (he’s held around 11 White House press conferences? Around the same length of time, Clinton had about 35 and Bush was around 60? Even the doddering Reagan was chugging along at twice this rate.)
The stakes were high and it doesn’t appear either Bush or the viewers gained much out of it.
Russert asked good, solid questions, but didn’t follow up in his usual style. My guess is that he wants to have Bush back on the show closer to the election, which would be great.
I have no doubt that if Russert gave Bush the Dean treatment, there’d be some blacklist in the White House with Tim’s name on it.
Aussie Doper friend checking in here…
Just a quick question to our American Dopers - and yes, I recognise that it’s a wholly subjective question - but in the fullness of time, how do you think history will look upon George W. Bush as a President? Will history judge him kindly? Or as a man out of his depth? A man who got the job because the whole electoral process has flaws? Or a man who met some very stern challenges to the best of his abilities?
I don’t think that’s answerable until we know if he gets a second term.
Unkindly, and even more so if he gets a second term. America was attacked and he successfully led an invasion of a soverign nation to capture the wrong guy.
His is a mean spirited and petty administration filled with corruption. He is an incredibly divisive leader during divisive times.
U. S. Grant and Warren G. Harding were #1 and #1a on the worst presidents list. Son of a Bush is #2 now.
Should he defy the odds and get a second term and not get a lobotomy, he will no doubt leave Grant and Harding in the dust and be the worst president ever.
This coming from a Bush convert who converted back to…something else…after George W. Bush was exposed as an unintelligent liar.
I pray for my country. Daily.
Hah. There was one line that really struck me in the interview for some reason. It was hardly the most important thing in the interview, but when it was said it was something like jabbing a needle in my forehead.
When talking about being a uniter, not a divider, Bush said he holds no ill will toward anyone in the process (the press and the campaign process, IIRC? don’t remember for sure at this late hour). A quote popped into my head from a couple of years ago, and I was inspired to photoshop it.
I think if you went back and looked at my comments, you will see I don’t attack. . .
QUOTE=Boo Boo Foo]Aussie Doper friend checking in here…
Just a quick question to our American Dopers - and yes, I recognise that it’s a wholly subjective question - but in the fullness of time, how do you think history will look upon George W. Bush as a President? Will history judge him kindly? Or as a man out of his depth? A man who got the job because the whole electoral process has flaws? Or a man who met some very stern challenges to the best of his abilities?
[/QUOTE]
Here’s my answer: the very worst President in American history, and unless Americans prove themselves less pliable than they have been recently, quite possibly the last.
The United States is one of the few republics which has yet to be usurped by an aspiring dictator in time of war or, more ominously, just prior to a really big war which appears to justify their accession. Lincoln and F. Roosevelt come close, I suppose. If this election even looks close, I think Bush’s people are going to go for it. They have a lot to lose at this point–like criminal prosecution and jail time.
Think I’m kidding? Go ahead and think that, but I’m going to be one of the first against the wall when that shit goes down, and don’t you think I don’t know it when I say it now.
I can’t stand watching the man, I flipped off the interview about mid-way through, mostly because the Imitrex wasn’t helping my migrane.
Anyway, the repetitive answers struck me and I got the same impression of this interview that pantom had. Russert was playing on W’s turf and he had to be a bit deferential sitting there in the Oval Office. So of course he wasn’t as confrontational as he was with Dean last year.
Later Sunday, I read the somewhat amusing Slate article about the interview, claiming Bush’s idea of reality is more of a Platonic standard than the Aristotlean standard we all live by. Briefly, the article ventures that Bush believes in a reality of ideas, not of sensation. If the sensations don’t match the ideas, the ideas win. Everyone else caters their ideas to what their sensations tell them.
This has struck me in the past on a number of issues, not only WMD. The stem cell decision stands out in my – Bush felt uncomfortable with stem cell research but apparently was convinced of the benefits of funding research in it. So he made what seemed like a reasonable compromise – he limited federal funding to research on 11 lines of already created, stable stem cells, and forbid federal funding on anything else or on creation of new lines. Of course, his decision, while beautiful, was not grounded in reality. The 11 lines have proven unreliable, unavailible, or nonexistent. So, in essence, federal funding for stem cell research in the US has been strictly curtailed. The ideal turns out to be a far cry from reality.
The Slate article points out that the same has happened both with the economy and with Iraq and WMD. Do the economic data show that tax cuts are not really having the desired effect? The economic data must be wrong! WMDs not in Iraq? Well, they must be there because Bush believes they are there. And if there are no actual weapons, then what Bush meant was programs!
The same is true of the Air National Guard. The same is true of Enron. It is a pattern which is very, very disconcerting and dangerous IMHO.
Just a quick rant to add to this:
What happened to all of the leaders in politics? The kind of people you feel proud to stand behind? I would say that the person who comes closest (at least for me) to this is Howard Dean, and he is in the process of being chewed up and spit out by the Presidential political machine.
On the other side of the aisle, there are good people like John McCain, who was likewise chewed up and spit out by the Presidential political machine. Political viewpoints are secondary, to an extent. All I’m asking for is a person with a cohesive, self-consistent worldview, who honestly believes in the good of the country, has a clear plan for making our country better, and can convince people that his way is correct.
There are plenty of people like this in the US – military leaders who have actually led troops into tough battles, iconoclastic “captains of industy” and scientists, hell even professional sports coaches. Why is American politics so absolutely devoid of them?
To Sofa King:
W could never be a dictator. A dictator needs to inspire absolute devotion, at least from a good percentage of the power base and military. A dictator needs to be a leader like I have described above, but with the added aspect of knowing how to seize and control power. Oftentimes, this is accomplished through fear and purges, although it is conceivable that sheer charisma alone may do it. John McCain possibly could be a dictator. FDR and Lincoln could have been. Look at any dictator. The only one who dodders is Kim Jong Il, and he inherited the post. Idi Amin, Saddam, Pinochet, etc. – they all have tremendous amounts of charisma and were able to construct a core cadre through tremendously strong personalities.
We don’t see a dynamic like that here. Bush’s people work for him because he was annointed by the RNC. There aren’t many who would loyally follow him to the grave. That’s what he would need if he wanted to seize control. With a >50% approval rating, there are far too many who would oppose any power grab to make it feasible.
Quick correction. Sorry for the treblepost.
Now there are 11 stem cell lines. When Bush made his August 2001, decision, he claimed there were more than 70.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/05/09/tech/main553079.shtml
[quote]
Diogenes the Cynic: Diogenes the Cynic: He denies that he failed to show up in Alabama but it doesn’t sound like he’s got any record of it. If he did, I’m sure would have said so.
I don’t think that I would have any difficulty at all proving where I have been every year of my life. I think that it is time that the President is called upon to put this to rest once and for all by proving that he was on duty during the time in question. Surely the men who were there with him then would speak up. This is just begging for a good PI.
BTW, my English teacher’s lie detector apparatus was making loud siren noises during the President’s discussion of his National Guard service. He kept trying to change the subject to how the National Guard shouldn’t be put down. Since Russert hadn’t made any disparaging comments about the Guard, the need for diversion seemed a little obvious.
That puts into words what I have been unable to articulate. I was reminded of that attitude again on Meet the Press when President Bush still insisted that we are being greeted as liberators in Iraq.
I was particularly fascinated by the way in which he was able to reinterprete his, Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s quotations from a year or so ago about WMD. If he tried something similar when explaining an inconsistency to the First Lady, it might go something like this:
"“Laura, when we married I never promised that I would always love you. I said that the potential for having the capability to love you always was in place at that time.”
I give him a big fat F. He dodged every question. He’s a tyrant who is recklessly trampling on our civil liberties. This time, I’m voting for whoever is the most flaming liberal on the ballot. I can’t take much more of Bush’s “peace and freedom”.
Well, there’s a turnaround. :eek:
I swear to God, I don’t understand how anyone can hear this man and think he’s fit to hold office. Every single response was filled with obfuscation, stammering, lost trails of thought, obvious diversionary tactics, inarticulate waffling, and outright lies.
Good to see that I’m not the only one standing on that particular soapbox. There is nothing I don’t think this administration capable of. Not one thing. He may not be inspiring to the masses, but many people find him “charming” (God only knows why when he can’t string three words together) and “compassionate” (despite not caring about anyone but the wealthy). He seems harmless, which makes him a good frontman when the polls turn against him and Cheney, Jim Baker, Poppy Bush and the whole creepy PNAC crowd use their manipulative ways to destroy the dregs of our democracy and rule it with an iron fist.
Honestly, I promise I don’t usually look up at the sky expecting black helicopters. But the Bush Family Evil Empire scares the bejeebers out of me. Their hubris and sense of entitlement know no bounds.
I think, once all the tell-all books have been written and the historians have gone through the files, that we will discover that this Administration was one of the most corrupt and amoral in history, which will make Richard Nixon’s enemies lists and secret recordings seem like amateur hour by comparison. It’s hard to get much lower than starting a war as a glorified croneyism setup, IMO.
Don’t worry, I’m sure Brutus or Sam Stone or Bricker or one of the other apologistas will be along any second now to spin this for us. 
Yet Bush was elected in 2000 after winning the votes of half the country. That’s a lot of people. Even the most dismal (for him) polls today show him winning 44% of the voters’ support. That, too, is a lot of people. Frankly, if you don’t understand that he holds appeal for a large segment of the populace, you have some major gaps in your comprehension.
And even if you get that lots of folks like him, but you merely don’t understand WHY or HOW they do… you still have problems.
For my part, I absolutely understand why people don’t like him. In fact, the reasons people don’t like him, for me, go into two columns: reasons I agree with, and reasons I don’t. For example, many people hold Bush’s environmental record against him. I don’t - I’m happy with the balance his administration has struck on the environment. Many people are furious with his attack on reproductive rights. I am not - I oppose abortion and funding for same.
On the other hand, many people are appalled at his support for the death penalty. Me, too: my respect for human life applies both to the unborn and the born, and I dislike having a President who has been such a proponent of the death penalty. Many people are uncomfortable with the certain declaration that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the reality that there was either a stunning intelligence failure or an outright lie on this subject. Me, too. I agree a case might have been made to remove Saddam from power even without the WMDs, but that case needed to be made.
I’m not a blind fan of everything this administration does, nor a blind voter who reflexively pulls the GOP lever every time I step in the booth.
But to say that you cannot imagine what people see in Bush, that you cannot fathom what aspects of the man and his Presidency appeal to many voters, is to place yourself squarely outside mainstream America.
- Rick
Here’s the transcript of the interview.
I’m working my way through it, and about halfway in, he sounds like a gibbering idiot. He says we are welcomed in Iraq: