BUSH WHACKED: When I saw Christopher Hitchens speak two weeks ago, he was asked what he thought of President Bush's case for war in Iraq. "If he had made the case convincingly," Hitch said, "I wouldn't have to."
I remembered that exchange this morning as I watched the President of the United States get absolutely crushed by Tim Russert on "Meet the Press." Now I'm far from a Bush-basher; while I didn't vote for the man and disagree with him on numerous subjects, I don't hold the visceral hatred of the president that many of my friends do, I believe he's neither a moron nor evil, and I've agreed with his major foreign policy campaigns, namely the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq.
But today, on Russert's show, Bush lived up to every single negative stereotype his enemies have of him- he was ill-informed, inarticulate, tripped over his words, and neglected to answer questions on numerous occasions. His answer for everything, if not preceded by a long pause, was "that's politics." The president seems to make the Iraq war case even more shoddily every time he tries, while his defense of his deficits was even weaker than that. And while Bush could have used the opportunity to put the resurgent Air National Guard story to bed, he punted that answer as well.
I've been pretty convinced all this time that the Democrats were facing an uphill battle to regain the White House. But now that Howard Dean will almost certainly not be the nominee, and since Bush seems to have entered a major slump since around the time of the State of the Union address, this might actually be a race after all. One thing I do know is that it's quite unlikely we'll see Bush interviewed by Tim Russert again as long as he's in office.