This is the first time I've watched a formal Bush press conference (transcript)....which I don't feel so guilty about since he's only given 8 in his entire presidency (3 if you only count the ones on prime-time television). At this point into their terms, Eisenhower had given 83 conferences and Clinton had given 40.
Of course, we know why Bush doesn't do press conferences. But before forgiving him for his inability to articulate, we shouldn't forget that press conferences aren't just opportunities for reporters to showcase: they are the closest thing we have to a public forum with the president. As opposed to carefully coordinated election stops, press conferences are (or rather could be) a time for an elected leader to be put on the spot for his failures. Sadly, the conferences are increasingly scripted especially for this president. When asked a question by Time Magazine's John Dickerson, the president fumbled through, "I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it...You just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be...."
At least he didn't look at his reporters list too much.
But in a surprising end, Don Gonyea of NPR got the last question and asked a particularly critical one: "You deliver a lot of speeches, and a lot of them contain similar phrases and they vary very little from one to the next....Have you failed in any way to really make the case [for the war with Iraq] to the American public?"
On a separate note, USA Today says that John Negroponte is likely to be selected as the US "ambassador" to Iraq. As an ambassador during the Reagan administration, Negroponte was allegedly complicit in human rights abuses commited by the Salvadoran Contras and the dictatorship in Honduras.
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