President tells nation, ‘I’m sure something will pop into my head’
Make no mistake. Gathering threat. Must not waver. Stay
the course.
His Tuesday night press conference was going along just fine.
The president had successfully ducked one question about whether
he’d made any "errors in judgment" and dodged another
about "personal responsibility for September 11th."
He in-your-faced the nation by playing the dunce, twice,
when asked clearly and directly why he and the vice president
insist on appearing before the 9/11 Commission together instead
of individually.
George W. Bush had wisely chosen to field questions from
the East Room of the White House instead of from the deck
of an aircraft carrier in front of a giant "Mission Accomplished"
banner. And when Uncle Dick picked out the evening’s attire,
the famous military flightsuit was tucked deep in the White
House play closet.
President Bush did not waver from his message while he stayed
the course. There was no talk of outsourcing the fighting
to India if the violence does not abate.
He even answered a question on the minds of many. "Mr.
President, who will we be handing the Iraqi government over
to on June 30th?"
BUSH (actual words): "We’ll find that out soon. That’s
what Mr. Brahimi is doing. He’s figuring out the nature of
the entity we’ll be handing sovereignty over."
See, Brahimi is on it. He’s gonna let us know. No truth to
the rumor Cheney plans to sell the strife-torn nation to Halliburton
for an undisclosed sum and some quid pro quo to be named later.
Once the entity is identified and order restored it will
be safe to implement the president’s time-tested economic
development strategy — distribute generous tax breaks to
the rich and open the region to exploitation by corporate
friends with addresses in the Bahamas.
Some of the questions were kind of tough but stuff kept coming
out of his mouth. "Now is the time and Iraq is the place."
And the smirk stayed tucked away, at least until it leaked
out when he said the oil revenue stream there is "pretty
darn significant."
But trouble loomed ahead, a grave and gathering question.
Mr. President: "After 9-11, what would your biggest mistake
be … and what lessons have learned from it?"
BUSH (actual words): "I wish you’d have given me this
written question ahead of time so I could plan for it. John,
I’m sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could’ve
done it better this way or that way. You know, I just — I’m
sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of
this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to
come up with answer, but it hadn’t yet. …"
"I hope — I don’t want to sound like I have made no
mistakes. I’m confident I have. I just haven’t — you just
put me under the spot here, and maybe I’m not as quick on
my feet as I should be in coming up with one."
And don’t get him started on those weapons of mass destruction.
"They could still be there. They could be hidden, like
the 50 tons of mustard gas in a turkey farm," some of
Col. Gadhafi’s leftovers found in Libya.
Stay the course. Hypothetical linguistic analysis reveals
that President Bush favors the word "course" because
it subconsciously reminds him of country club living and shooting
golf with his dad and that he favors the term "stay the
course" because it’s stuck in his head from hearing Dana
Carvey poke fun at his pop.
"Stay the course" means never having to say you’re
sorry, never having to answer any question you don’t want
to.
Stay the course, and you’ll probably find those weapons after
all. You may even get that parade for the American liberators
you promised yourself way back when.
Make no mistake. Gathering threat. Dangerous man. Stay the
course?