Fineman Nails It: Fearful Bush

Jan. 10, 2007 - George W. Bush spoke with all the confidence of a perp in a police lineup. I first interviewed the guy in 1987 and began covering his political rise in 1993, and I have never seen him, in public or private, look less convincing, less sure of himself, less cocky. With his knitted brow and stricken features, he looked, well, scared. Not surprising since what he was doing in the White House library was announcing the escalation of an unpopular war.
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Bush's political problem is not so much that he has lied to the American people—though he may well have done so—but that he seems for years to have been lying to himself.
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What the voters saw on TV just now was a man struggling to come to grips with his own unwillingness to face facts. It's still a struggle. His acknowledgement of mistakes was oblique and not as brave as it sounded at first blush. Mistakes were made, and he said. "The responsibility rests with me," he said. What he meant to convey was that others had made the mistakes, but that he was stepped up to take the hit. Hoo-aw! He said that he had "consulted" congressional leaders of both parties before he came to a decision on sending more than 20,000 additional troops. He didn't really consult with members of Congress, and certainly not with Democrats, unless you consider Sen. Joe Lieberman a Democrat.

There were no signature Bush smirks, no glints in his eyes, no leaning on the podium, no observable indications of comfort or confidence, no ferocity, no emotion, nothing. Nothing but a bland, staid shell of a man whom you hoped knew deep down that what he was selling was yet more bullshit. Had that been the case though, there would have been some signal in his face that he was actually doing something more than simply portraying a man reading in the most detached way possible from a teleprompter that kept the words moving along as he seemed to be grateful that he didn't at least stumble as much as he had in the past.

It was a well-rehearsed speech read with about as much passion as a grocery list. And, as some have concluded, those ingredients spell nothing but disaster.