Presidential George, too little, too late?

[corplinx]

The wife and I were snuggled up watching the tele tonight. The program went off the air and I started flipping through channels. I flipped past cspan and then flipped back. There was George.....

To explain what I saw, I have to go back a bit. To a time when tech stocks were too hot and I was traveling on company scratch. I was a busy geek who spent time tinkering with Linux when he wasn't working and was pretty apathetic about politics.

There was this election coming up between 2 guys who were sons of career politicians. And I could care less for either of them. Especially Bush II. His dad was just president 8 years before and his dad's lack of coolness was still hanging in the air like a bad fart in an elevator.

Bored in my hotel room in Burlington, I tuned into the news. They had this Fox news network in that hotel that I didn't get back home. This guy O'Reilly had Bush on and was hammering him hard. If Bush tried a copy and paste answer to a question, O'Reilly followed up and tried to get past the sound bites.

Bush was awkward but earnest. He didn't seem very presidential. After 8 years of the eloquent Clinton, the bar was pretty high.

Time went on and every other day it seems there was a "Bushism" in the news. This guy was blowing lines left and right. Maybe he wasn't used to the rigors of 24/7 campaigning. Maybe he had a learning disability. Maybe he was an idiot. Whatever he was, he lacked the polish you expect after growing up with Reagan and turning into a 20-something with Clinton.

After he became president, the Bushisms were at an alltime high. All of a sudden he was reading off his notes... slowly. He was taking his time. He was trying too hard not to get ahead of himself and make more gaffes. Would this guy ever find his groove?

Fast forward to today, I flip over on cspan and there is President Bush. Not Mr. Bush, not stuttering Bush, not mushmouth Bush, but President Bush. He was giving a speech to home depot workers somewhere. He was off notes and off teleprompter. He was explaining in what seems like his own words how tax cuts stimulate growth. Instead of giving a speech he seemed like he was just talking. On the subject of tax cuts to stimulate growth, he had the confidence and understanding that reminded me of Bill Clinton off the cuff talking about the difference in european social health care plans.

Which brings me to....

Is it too late for Bush to seem relaxed and in control to Joe Average? Will he forever be Mr. Subliminable in the minds of the voters?

By the way, I finally watched the criterion edition of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. If you want to watch a movie where all the japanese samurai die leaving only the white guy as the "last samurai" (oops spoiler), then Seven Samurai isn't for you.

[fishbob]

Sooner or later, that On-the-job training kicks in.

I try to listen past the form of the speeches and try to catch the content. I laugh at the Bushisms as much as anybody, but I get really annoyed when the commentaters talk about the "performance" of a political speaker. Certainly a good speaker presents a better impression to the public, and makes his points more understandable, but we need more than a good speaker to run the country.

Bush should be able to improve his public speaking image - keep a count of new Bushisms to check his progress - but what he says ought to count for more than how he says it.

[Zep]

I suspect the backroom spin-doctors have been giving him some intense training courses on "how to look and sound natural". They did the same for Reagan.

Easy way to tell is to check the wording and content of these well-presented speeches on the same subject but at different venues and times. A "learned" set of automaton responses sound a bit too similar and glib after a while.

Not that The Shrub is unique in doing this, of course. It's just that he's the highest public profile politician on the planet at this time.