Posted by
The Hermit Crab on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 3:22:58 PM
The Crab has been home from work with some baffling ailment that keeps him from sleeping, living without headaches and other pains, and enjoying life generally. He also has been too sick and tired to update his blogsite, for which I apologize. However, there are a few thoughts I'd like to touch on while I convalesce.
I watched President Bush deliver a speech at the Department of Defense today. It was a fine speech, well-written and well-delivered. He reminded us of what Saddam's Iraq was really like, and of the horrors that our ousting of his regime put a stop to. The speech was well-received, and rightly so. It occured to me that on the too-rare times that I actually watch President Bush deliver a speech, or even a prepared statement at some event or other, he invariably performs well. Sure, he may mispronounce a word or two, but who doesn't? I heard Rush Limbaugh mispronounce a word as I was typing this, which he swiftly corrected, as the President does. So where does the ridicule of the President as a poor speaker come from?
A hint comes from an Ann Coulter column I read not too long ago, in which she points out a mystery. VP Dan Quayle was the butt of countless jokes based on a seemingly endless lists of malaprops and verbal bloopers. Yet, in an era when the President and Vice President are stalked by flocks of cameramen and film crews seemingly everywhere save the bedroom and the bathroom, there exists no film footage of the gaffes. Do you remember actually seeing any of these Quayle moments? I'll bet you don't -- you just took the reporters' word for it. (There is actual footage of Al Gore, then-Vice President of the United States of America, being unable to identify busts of the Founding Fathers at Monticello, but almost the only place you can see it is at Rush Limbaugh's website. Yet Gore is the "Goracle".)
Could it be that the reason you are told that the President is such a poor, near-incoherent speaker is that that's what the MSM wants you to believe? They know few of us watch speeches these days. We shouldn't make it so easy for them to fool us.
My respect for Sen. John McCain went up today. He went to Israel today, and virtually the first place he went was to Sderot, which has attained some mournful fame as one of the prime targets of Hizbollah rockets and morter fire coming from terrorists opposed to the continued existence of the State of Israel. It took real courage to go to Sderot, and I emphasize the word "real". I could keep writing on this, but it would be an insult to your intelligence. Compare McCain's courage to the "courage" of Obama or Clinton (take your pick), and draw your own conclusions.