Condoleeza Rice, while appearing on This Week this morning, was asked about what's been widely accepted as civil war in Iraq. Her response, while in English and fairly articulate, could pretty much have been relegated to the gibberish heap, and prompted me to ask several times: why are you still talking?
The interview was done remotely, Mr. Stephanopoulos on his set, and Ms. Rice from President Bush's Crawford, Texas ranch, which underscored beautifully the reason that Condi can confidently spew out one word after another, finally crafting sentences that, one after the other, didn't answer the question, but spiraled into the Bush party line: I won't answer a hypothetical question.
What Ms. Rice forgets, I think, is that when she's answering questions on a national TV show, she's no longer talking to her boss. A conversation between our president and Ms. Rice, a scholar from Stanford, would be a little - what's the word I'm looking for? Oh, yeah: unfair. It would be like, I think, Jane Goodall, upon returning to civilization after spending years with the apes, forgetting to ratchet up her speech for a press conference. While President Bush can't pick a thought out of a bushel of words, we can.
Accepting the cycnicism of our administration month after month, crisis after crisis, is like accepting having swallowed a couple of bowling balls. It's serious, and remedying it will feel sooooo good.