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On 7 Oct 2004 13:36:02 -0700, (Jonathan Ganz)
wrote:
Has anyone read the July/August issue of The Atlantic?
There's an interesting article by James Fallows. Basically,
it's about James Fallows's description of John Kerry's debating skills
("When George Meets John," July/August Atlantic). The most remarkable
part was Fallows's documentation of President Bush's mostly overlooked
changes over the past decade-specifically, "the striking decline in
his sentence-by-sentence speaking skills." Fallows points to
"speculations that there must be some organic basis for the
President's peculiar mode of speech-a learning disability, a reading
problem, dyslexia or some other disorder," but correctly concludes,
"The main problem with these theories is that through his forties Bush
was perfectly articulate."
This is scary. It reminds me of Reagan.
An alternative explanation for Bush's miserable, stumbling performance
the other evening was that Terry McAuliffe, head of the DNC, was
sitting in the seat behind Laura Bush. Anytime that George looked
over for some reassurance from Laura, he was forced to see Terry
McAuliffe as well, who may well have been laughing, smirking, rolling
his eyes or shooting Bush the finger for all we can imagine. Actually
a brilliant move by the Democrats, as both Bush and Cheney seem to
spend their time in protective bubbles shielding them from the
realities of contrary opinions or pointed questions. Bush was totally
flustered and went down like a flaming zeppelin.
Obviously Bush doesn't handle pressure very well, as we saw in the
Florida schoolroom on 9/11 and during the debate. I was a bit
surprised when Cheney mentioned something to the effect that "we know
how this President will react when we are attacked" the other night.
Yes, we do. He will sit there in stunned confusion and then proceed
to screw things up.
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