When is a falsehood not a lie...

The President of the United States during his press conferences can be mistaken and loose lipped, casual, jocular, jovial, joking. How do we know when he's telling the truth and when he's kidding around?

In Monday's meeting with the press, President Bush kidded around a lot, making fun repeatedly of one reporter's seersucker suit, for example. In fact, he told joke after joke, his shoulders shaking with sarcastic laughter.

Then he would get serious and threatening again, pointing his finger and repeating his phrases about global terror and fighting them "over there" so they don't come here.

He kept talking about Hezbollah's having "launched attacks" and that being the cause of the recent war. I wanted so much for a reporter to shout out, "By launching attacks, do you mean the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers? Is that 'launching an attack'?

Bush said he had "never" associated Iraq with 9/11. I didn't get that. Half the troops in Iraq think they are fighting because of 9/11.

He said fighting the terrorists would take a long time, but I just remember Donald Rumsfeld saying the war would last six days or six weeks.

He said the mission was always to bring democracy to that part of the world. Mission accomplished?

He said he would never withdraw the troops from Iraq, not while he was president. So when the next elected president, Democrat or Republican, does withdraw the troops, whatever happens will not fall on Bush's shoulders. It won't be pretty. There won't be peace, not for a long time. But Bush will not have to worry about it, he'll be gone. The press can blame the new president who withdraws the troops for any continued instability. Bush will have just gone in, destabilized and destroyed the country beyond repair, and -- if troops are withdrawn and war continues -- he can point his famous fingers in another direction.

I think that is the definition of cowardice, letting someone else take the fall for your mistakes and ego.

I can't think of any other president who talked about himself so much, who was so self-absorbed. He doesn't even know enough history to realize his own father's track record at the ballot box?

Bush said he thought he was the only president who didn't carry the state he was born in. But as the journalist below notes, it's just another example of casual, jocular, jovial, joking around talk in a press conference that would be a lot better off with a statesman-like demeanor, with serious talk about serious business, with the acknowledgment and gravity that befits the fact that people are dying and being wounded every day because of this war of choice, so GWB could wear his fly jump suit and proclaim, as though it were a good thing, "I am a war president."

PG



August 22, 2006

To a Presidential Notion: Sorry, Mr. Bush, but No

By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, Aug. 21 — "I may be the only person, the only presidential candidate who never carried the state in which he was born," President Bush said on Monday.

Uh, no, Mr. President. There have been quite a few, actually. Some are known only to historians, while others are famous. You might even call one a household name, Mr. President, depending on which household.

But we get ahead of ourselves.

Mr. Bush made his comment while expanding on his intention to stay out of the Senate race in Connecticut, where the incumbent, Joseph I. Lieberman, is trying to win despite being denied the nomination of his own Democratic Party.

Since Mr. Lieberman has supported the president on the Iraq war, the inevitable question has been how hard Mr. Bush would campaign against him, if at all. In good-naturedly dodging the question, Mr. Bush noted that he himself failed to carry Connecticut twice, despite having been born in New Haven in 1946.

Now, a trip down Trivia Lane to recall other presidential candidates who were defeated in the states in which they were born. And, no, we do not assert that the list is complete, nor do we gloat, for there are many ways to be tripped when playing Facts About the Presidents (and would-be presidents).

Al Gore, for instance. History buffs will remember that he failed to carry Tennessee in 2000. But while Tennessee is often called his "home state," he was born in Washington, D.C., which he carried overwhelmingly.

George McGovern, on the other hand, unambiguously joins Mr. Bush as a presidential candidate who failed to carry the state of his birth. Mr. McGovern, a South Dakota native, carried only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia against President Richard M. Nixon in 1972.

Hubert H. Humphrey, of course, was a giant in Minnesota politics. But he was born in South Dakota, a state he lost to Nixon in 1968.

Others on the list include Adlai E. Stevenson, born in Los Angeles, who did not carry California (or Illinois, where he was governor) against Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 or 1956.

There was Gov. Alfred E. Smith of New York, who grew up in Manhattan, but failed to carry the Empire State against Herbert Hoover in 1928. Let us not forget James W. Cox, who was born in Ohio but lost to another Ohioan, Warren G. Harding, in 1920. And surely we must recognize Alton B. Parker, born in Cortland, N.Y., who lost the 1904 election to another New Yorker, Theodore Roosevelt.

When he won the White House in 1844, James K. Polk did not carry the state of his birth, North Carolina, or the state where he had been governor, Tennessee. Fast-forward to the time of Abraham Lincoln , who failed to carry his birth state, Kentucky, in 1860 or 1864. (His 1864 opponent, George B. McClellan, did not carry Pennsylvania, even though he was born in Philadelphia.)

Let us close with some familiar names of our time. Another presidential candidate who did not carry the state where he was born was Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, who was born in Colorado.

And the household name, Mr. President? That would be your father, George Herbert Walker Bush , born in the Town of Milton in eastern Massachusetts, a state he lost twice.