Freezing in NH

From an op-ed in the NYTimes: George Speaks, Badly.  (I really want to cut and paste the whole thing…)

Watching George W. Bush address the New York financial community Friday brought back many memories. Unfortunately, they were about his speech right after Hurricane Katrina, the one when he said: “America will be a stronger place for it.”

All I can say is “George, you’re doing a heckuva job.”

The president squinched his face and bit his lip and seemed too antsy to stand still. As he searched for the name of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (“the king, uh, the king of Saudi”) and made guy-fun of one of the questioners (“Who picked Gigot?”), you had to wonder what the international financial community makes of a country whose president could show up to talk economics in the middle of a liquidity crisis and kind of flop around the stage as if he was emcee at the Iowa Republican Pig Roast.

I just wonder what goes through his head?  Does he think this isn’t serious?  Does he think it is serious but just doesn’t know how to show any empathy? 

The country that elected George Bush — sort of — because he seemed like he’d be more fun to have a beer with than Al Gore or John Kerry is really getting its comeuppance. Our credit markets are foundering, and all we’ve got is a guy who looks like he’s ready to kick back and start the weekend.

This is not the first time Bush’s attempts to calm our fears redoubled our nightmares. His first speech after 9/11 — that two-minute job on the Air Force base — was so stilted that the entire country felt like heading for the nearest fallout shelter. After Katrina, of course, it took forever to pry him out of Crawford, and then he more or less read a laundry list of Goods Being Shipped to the Flood Zone and delivered some brief assurances that things would work out.

Yeah, maybe things would go better if we had a VP that was camera ready.  Our current one can’t do anything except snarl. 

But wait — more positive news! The secretary of Housing and Urban Development is proposing that lenders supply an easy-to-read summary with mortgage agreements. “You know, these mortgages can be pretty frightening to people. I mean, there’s a lot of tiny print,” the president said.

Er, there’s already a one-page HUD summary before the closing.  Not sure what else could be here except “hey dummy, if you pretended your salary was twice as high as it really is, you can’t afford this.”

Really, if he can’t fix the economy, the least he could do is rehearse the speech.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 16th, 2008 at 8:37 am and is filed under articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.