Good speech, bad press conference. Occasional moments — when he got angry and forceful — when it clicked. A lot of the time, though, it was rambling and hesitant and stumbling and demonstrative of why Dubya doesn’t do press conferences. He got better as the conference went on, but, especially at the beginning, he clearly seemed nervous, and was overly and obviously careful trying to avoid saying anything that was going to be splashed across the headlines the next day.
Which brings up the questions of mistakes and apologies. Multiple reporters clearly wanted (a) an admission of failure about Iraq or 9/11 or something, along with (b) an apology. That clearly would have led the news for the next several cycles — “Bush admits was wrong” … “Bush apologizes for failure” — and was clearly something Bush and/or his advisors considered verboten. Unfortunately, by not doing so, in turn he ends up with headlines of “Bush refuses to admit he was wrong” … “Bush won’t apologize.” It was a neat trap, and Bush wasn’t up to figuring a way out of it.
Regardless, overall, though there were bits of good message (and when quoted in snippets, it sounded good), his presentation was frequently awful, especially compared to the relatively polished demeanor of Kerry. He came across, for much of the questioning, as, frankly, doltish.
Net loss for the GOP campaign, frankly. I expect a poll drop, and I expect a dearth of press conferences for the next several months …
Despite the lack of apology (that despite repeated urgings for one), NPR led off this morning with “The president concedes” that the images of fighting in Iraq are “troubling” and that he “may have made mistakes.” Which makes you wonder what would have been said if he had given an apology.
Transcript of the Q&A part of the press conference is here.
Well he did hit all of the PNAC bullet points in the speech, and Uncle Karl got 17 minutes of free TV campaign time, so go them. Still didn’t explain what the long-term goals/plans of our Iraqi colony are going to be, or that 1000,000 troops are going to be there indefinitely.
And I guess that he did a good job of staying on message during the Q&A period of mostly sticking to the “safe” reporters (the Washington times, and the NYT’s Bumiller…I mean come on now). And He did do a good job of continuing to staying on message, even though he was answering questions that weren’t asked.
So other then the out right lying, I guess he did a good job.