Maybe you are tired of my commentary on the Press Conference. It's hard to imagine, but it might be possible. Here's some other commentary on it.
"My heart sank when the President said, "I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with [an] answer, but it hadn't yet." Has ever a President uttered more demoralizing words in the course of seeking to reassure Americans and the world? ("I am not a crook," maybe.) I wish the President to stand by our troops now in peril on foreign shores. I wish the President to protect us from terrorist attacks at home. I wish the President to preside wisely over a vigorous and free economy and society. I wish the President were able to stand up to the pressures of those jobs. But the President cannot even come up with an answer to a question he said, mere seconds before, he has "oftentimes [thought] about" over the last couple of years: "You've looked back before 9-11 for what mistakes might have been made. After 9-11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have learned from it?" The President replied, "I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it." And then he then explained about the pressure of press conferences.
Honestly, I was truly astonished to feel so saddened at that moment. I hadn't supposed any appreciable confidence in the President's ability remained in me. But it turns out I am enough of a Pollyanna to have held out some secret hope, at least till then." - Eric Rauchway for Altercation.
"I've just watched the press conference later on C-SPAN. Not only was the transcript encouraging. I found the president clear, forceful, impassioned, determined, real. This was not an average performance. I found it Bush at his best. He needs to do it more." - Andrew Sullivan
"To Bush, credibility means that you keep saying today what you said yesterday, and that you do today what you promised yesterday. "A free Iraq will confirm to a watching world that America's word, once given, can be relied upon," he argued Tuesday night. When the situation is clear and requires pure courage, this steadfastness is Bush's most useful trait. But when the situation is unclear, Bush's notion of credibility turns out to be dangerously unhinged. The only words and deeds that have to match are his. No correspondence to reality is required. Bush can say today what he said yesterday, and do today what he promised yesterday, even if nothing he believes about the rest of the world is true. - William Saletan
"Set aside the source for a moment: every word of this [President Bush's assessment of the war on terror] is profoundly true, the importance is the song, not the singer. I honestly don't care all that much about the singer and have many differences with him in other areas. But somehow, someway, this particular man grasped on 9/11 that all of the incidents listed above ARE connected, cannot be addressed piecemeal, cannot be addressed in a defensive mode - as every Western leader and every American president, Republican and Democrat alike, had previously done - and that decisive, resolute, offensive action was the only possible way to win this war, a war we did not seek, and in fact assiduously sought to avoid prior to 9/11.
The question of the moment is, is Iraq a genuine part of this war? It sure as hell is now. As Bush very keenly stated, the key to this war is to stay on the offense, to keep taking the battle to the enemy." - Eric Olsen
That's enough to get you started.
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