Bush Speak ...

I'm old enough to remember the confusion President Eisenhower used to leave with those who listened to his press conferences and speeches. We pointy-headed intellectuals used to think that he was remarkably inarticulate. We later learned that it was a studied confusion. Warned in advance about a difficult question, he assured an aide,"I'll bamboozle ‘em." I wish that this transcript of President Bush's interview with Tim Russert this morning smacked of an Eisenhower-like bamboozlement. Read the transcript carefully. It is a poor performance, even according to sympathetic viewers at the National Review (scroll down). (See also: Peggy Noonan at the Wall Street Journal.) President Bush was ill-at-ease, defensive, and inarticulate throughout the interview. He seemed strangely out of touch with reality. Even when Eisenhower was bamboozling us with double-speak non-sense, no one ever doubted that he was in command and spoke with authority.