awol's press conference didn't provide any information that the world didn't already know; namely, the man is in waaaaay over his head.
rambling, stuttering, hesitant, what little content he had was constantly repeated, dodging, clumsily dancing around points; at one point he challenged some unnamed force that doesn't want "brown people" to be free; at another he admitted that nobody likes to "see dead people on tv" ("i know i don't..."); if he was in any other position in the world he would be fired; if he were in school he'd be held back; if he were in an alley he'd be held up; if he were our kid he'd be slapped silly.
all in all, we agree with tom shales in the washpost:
"when i say something, i mean it," george w. bush said decisively near the end of last night's prime-time presidential news conference. nobody called out, "when will you say something?" -- the white house press corps is too mannerly for that -- but some reporters, and some viewers, must have been thinking it.
a
wol, in answer to a question about richard clarke's apology on behalf of the government to the people of america,
refused to offer an apology of his own. he also was unable to think of a mistake he had made in the past three years.
[ed. note: save it. we've got a million punchlines to that one, and we know you do, too. let's just let the easy ones slide, ok?]
it does look like he's ready to send more troops to iraq. and he mentioned mustard gas on a turkey farm so much that we thought he was talking about his lunch today.
the good news is, awol said he will stake his re-election on iraq.
the bad news is, he expects the same 5 supreme court justices to vote just like they did 4 years ago.
now, if we can just get the 24 million people who call in every week for american idol to vote democrat in november, they can take revenge for awol's pre-empting fantasia vs. simon tonight.
cross-posted at mydd, and the american street, and our own mistake-free blog.