BUSH’S PRESS CONFERENCE PERFORMANCE….The most consistent complaint I’ve gotten in email about Bush’s Tuesday night press conference is that the press said nothing about his delivery: halting, unsure, fumbling, and insubstantial.
Granted, my emailers are all a bunch of Bush-hating liberals, but I think that even a neutral observer would concede the point: his delivery really was horrible whenever he was off his familiar talking points. Over and over he found himself grasping for words and unsure of how to respond. Why did the press not mention this? Some possibilities:
-
Remarking on a politician’s delivery is considered below the belt, no matter how obvious it is.
-
Bush is always like this. It didn’t seem worth noting.
-
Ronald Reagan did teach us a lesson, and it’s not that deficits don’t matter. It’s that you can have a noticeably fumbling and forgetful delivery on national TV and it doesn’t matter. You can still win 49 states.
-
If they complain about this in print the White House will no longer return their calls.
-
The press did mention it but I didn’t notice.
Any other possibilities? Even with my partisan blinders off, I have to say that his delivery seemed so obviously nervous and shaky as to almost demand comment. Why didn’t it get any?
