Bush Classic - Press Conference 11/08/2006

I keep a notebook next to where I watch television so when something strikes me I can write it down. After the 2006 elections, I watched a press conference with George Bush. As you'll recall, the Democrats took control of the House and the Senate tied. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was being criticized all over and George Bush was being pressured to get rid of him. Here is part of the transcript:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/11/20061108-2.html

"I had been talking with Don Rumsfeld over a period of time about fresh perspective.
He likes to call it fresh eyes.
He, himself, understands that Iraq is not working well enough, fast enough.
And he and I are constantly assessing.
And I'm uh assessing uh, as well,
all the time,
by myself..."

Okay - that made me laugh and laugh and laugh. From the transcript, I added the 'uh's' because I was watching it with TIVO at the time and I wrote it exactly how he said it.
I thought this was funny because it sounds like he's started to say that Donald Rumsfeld was doing all the assessing and then he thought he better say he did some assessing too, and then he even thought it would be good for us to know that he assesses by himself even.
He sounded like a little kid proud that he can now assess on his own. You probably had to hear it to appreciate why I think its funny. Even then it might not strike you like it strikes me.

In the same press conference he was talking about why Americans voted the way they did.
He said:
"Somehow it seeped in their conscious that my attitude was just simply "stay the course." "Stay the course" means, let's get the job done, but it doesn't mean staying stuck on a strategy or tactics that may not be working. So perhaps I need to do a better job of explaining that we're constantly adjusting. And so there's fresh perspective -- so what the American people hear today is we're constantly looking for fresh perspective. "

I thought that was interesting because he had been talking about 'staying the course' over the previous several months - it was his mantra. So, to imply that Americans got the wrong message when he said 'stay the course' over and over again is odd. I think Americans DID get the message. That's why Repbulicans who stuck with the President generally didn't do well.

Well, its old news now. But, really - these have been tough years.

I encourage anyone to look around at the federal government websites. There's a lot of interesting information there. I'm glad they had the transcript of the press conference.