Meet the Press

Madison · Feb 9, 2004

The President Speaks
But is anybody listening?
by Justin Raimondo

As George W. Bush stumbled, mumbled, and grumbled his way through a special edition of Meet the Press with Tim Russert, an unspoken question kept rising above his droning voice: is this stammering dolt really the President of the United States?

On the Missing WMD Commission:

"There is a lot of investigations going on about the intelligence service, particularly in the Congress, and that's good as well. The Congress has got the capacity to look at the intelligence gathering without giving away state secrets, and I look forward to all the investigations and looks."

Naturally, he never answered Russert's question, which was why was he so reluctant to appoint this commission in the first place. Bush also evaded the question of whether he might himself testify before this commission, or the 9/11 commission. "Perhaps" is all Russert got out of him. And the President's answer to at least ten questions was, essentially, a single word: "Yeah."

Is this how a President talks?

...

It has to be admitted, though, that Bush really lost it at a certain point in the interview. Asked if 530-plus casualties and 3.000 wounded in the Iraq war was worth it, the President squirmed in his chair like a schoolboy:

"For the parents of the soldiers who have fallen who are listening, David Kay, the weapons inspector, came back and said, 'In many ways Iraq was more dangerous than we thought.' It's we are in a war against these terrorists who will bring great harm to America, and I've asked these young ones to sacrifice for that."

These parents will have no doubt read the headlines about Kay's statement, upon resigning as chief U.S. weapons inspector, that "we were almost all wrong" about WMD in Iraq. So why did their sons and daughters have to die? Here is the President's answer:

"A free Iraq will change the world. It's historic times. A free Iraq will make it easier for other children in our own country to grow up in a safer world because in the Middle East is where you find the hatred and violence that enables the enemy to recruit its killers."

Your child is dead because "it's historic times." Oh, and, by the way, it's not just Iraq: we're going after the entire Middle East. We're out to "change the world." Remember, it's for the children. Just not your children. Hardly a convincing line to hand out to the parents of the fallen.

....

George W. Bush as communicator operates on a purely perceptual level of consciousness: In the Bushian narrative, certain key words, practically bereft of any connective tissue, are meant to communicate images rather than concepts:.

"Barbaric â tortured â mutilated â mass graves â AIDS

â feed the hungry

â heed the call."

What AIDS has to do with anything is anybody's guess. One long ago gave up expecting this President to make sense, but is basic coherence too much to ask?

Unfiltered by speechwriters and spin-meisters, Bush's rhetorical style is, literally, Orwellian. George Orwell, in his classic novel, 1984, coined the term "duckspeak" to mean the tendency of political language to consist of stringing together words in a stream-of-consciousness that winds up sounding much like the quacking of a duck.

George W. Bush may not be the most articulate advocate of the neo-imperialist vision, but his basic approach sets the tone for the War Party, and fairly represents its program. A few more performances like that, and Bush 43 may quack himself out of a job.
More...

Log in or Sign up

Meet the Press

Madison