Bush's Urgent Task: To Calm Public's Growing Impatience

Bush's Urgent Task: To Calm Public's Growing Impatience
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
Published: October 29, 2003

WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 — Early on Tuesday morning, as many Americans were scanning newspaper headlines about the latest wave of deadly bombings in Iraq, President Bush met with his press secretary and his communications director in the Oval Office. He told them, aides said, that he wanted to hold a full-scale news conference a few hours later.

The idea had been under consideration for several weeks, but it was only after the attacks in Baghdad on Monday that Mr. Bush decided to take his message directly to the voters and the world.

For weeks, while opinion polls showed diminished support for his postwar leadership, he had accused the press of filtering out good news from Iraq and overplaying the bad.

The decision reflects how urgent it is for the White House to keep public opinion about Iraq from deteriorating to the point that it could limit the president's policy choices and threaten his chances for re-election.

----snip----

Despite his longstanding attempts to cast his foreign policy as conducted without regard to polls or domestic politics, he was drawn into rare comments about the electoral implications of a drawn-out conflict in Iraq.

Mr. Bush said he expected the American people to be patient because they were "able to differentiate between politics and reality," suggesting that he would cast criticism of his leadership as partisan and unfounded.

And America's media stand ready to help, Mr. President!

Still, something is slipping, and not merely the polls. Even with a lock on the White House and Congress and their talk radio bullyboys everywhere, the Republicans are on the defensive. The Iraq narrative isn't being understood as intended. Too much death, too little oil...

There's a ray of hope in these scramblings by Bush. Slight hope - and wholly capable of being thwarted by the obligatory dufus move from the opposition - but for the first time in many months there's some hope.

As in, Zell Miller announcing his support for the chimp's "re-election"?

One of the many things bu$h hates about his job is having to go before the press (even if they are lapdogs) to justify "his" positions on anything.

While I don't believe for a moment that he wanted to hold the news conference, some of his handlers sure as hell wanted him to do so. Note that they trotted the Tiny Fool out without rehearsing him! His performance was reflective of the way he really speaks in public: slowly, haltingly, straining his little brain to make the connection between one word and the next. His train of thought is barely capable of leaving the station.

The whole thing was a truly desperate move, as you could tell by watching him for about five seconds. Excellent!

:evilgrin:
dbt

NY Times today had a piece about how the famous carrier landing, which the Dems feared would be used to tout Bush's might in the upcoming campaign, is now looked upon as a fiasco and embarrassment. Thought the last line, asking Dem candidates to think twice before posing with a cow for an Iowa photo op was a bit lame, but the overall tone was one of contempt for Bush and his handlers and the way they have flip-flopped on whose idea it was to have a banner on the ship.