And Then the President Said...

But before we get into what the President said last night when CNN’s Sr. White House Correspondent John King interviewed him on News Night, I just want to say I really enjoy watching George W. Bush these days. I used to avoid his TV appearances. But now watching him has become a great pleasure. And I have to give him points for not drooling. I don’t know how he does that. Whenever either side of my face doesn’t work because of a dentist’s shot, I have the worst time keeping the drooling in check. And here our President has the problem all the time because of his disability. But somehow he’s mastered not drooling. Or at least he’s mastered not drooling on-camera. Way to go, Mr. President. And I also have to say, he was very personable last night on News Night. He smiled alot, and put forward that down-home regular guy persona he has come to rely on as being, if not intelligent, at least tolerable. And it probably was a very annoying interview for him. The camera crew positioned him so that he had to keep his left side toward the camera. But in spite of the fact that his droopy mouth was such a riveting eye-catching sight, he seemed in good spirits. Of course ass-kisser John King lobbed soft balls at him. I don’t know what’s happened to John King. He used to be a newsman. But he’s become a brown-nosing Bush sycophant who wouldn’t ask a hardball question to save CNN’s soul. A perfect example of the King suck-up was when he said: “You have spoken about working with your new Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on a public diplomacy campaign in the Muslim world. I want to ask what you think has failed in that regard so far in the sense that the State Department did reach out and hire a Madison Avenue ad executive to try to help. You had an office of global communication here in the White House, at one point offices in London and Islamabad. We've created an Arab language television network paid for by the taxpayers in the United States. Where have we failed so far?” Bush answered, “The propagandists have done a better job of depicting America as a hateful place, a place wanting to impose our form of government on people and our religion on people and it's -- we're behind when it comes to selling our own story and telling people the truth about America.” So our only failure in Iraq has been that the war hasn’t gotten the right spin. But Condi Rice is going to solve that problem. Condi Rice-- whose hair-trigger anger gets ramped up to a snarling, lip-curling, meaner than a snake, fuck me? fuck you! piss-off faster than Colin Powell can tell ten lies--is going to use diplomacy? That will be right after she and Rummy start World War III. As far as lessons learned are concerned, Bush said, “I think this time around it will be a little different. I'll be a better spectator than I was the first time.” And why not? Now that the White House has caused total turmoil throughout the world, with this morning’s estimate of the percentage of the planet who hate us at 58%, the President’s plan for the next four years is to kick back and survey the wreckage he has caused. But back to John King. Being on the White House beat, it’s possible he has received instructions that the President is incapable of handling difficult questions. With Bush acting like a clueless moke from down the block, and John King acting like he’s afraid the Prez doesn’t know his name anymore, there was only one WHOOPS moment in the interview. That moment came early when King opened his segment of the program saying, “I thought one of the more interesting points is when I asked the president if he could just do one thing, just one thing to improve our homeland security, our defense in the war on terror what would it be?” The President’s answer: “The human intelligence, the ability to get inside somebody's mind, the ability to read somebody's mail, the ability to listen to somebody's phone call...(pause)...that somebody being the enemy.” And the enemy is us.