As I mentioned here, I was appalled by George W. Bush's August 21 press conference. I don't think the guy's a very good president and I think almost every policy he's pursuing is exacerbating, not easing, the problems it was intended to solve. But this time, I was really stunned by his demeanor, his inability to defend his positions via coherent sentences and above all, his leaden attempts to josh with the press corps and to avoid serious answers via lighthearted faux friendliness. I kept waiting for at least one reporter to get up and say, "I don't mind the folksy banter, Mr. President, but I would like a real response to my question."
I think the Democrats are missing a bet (and there's a clause that's about as rare on the Internet as porn) by not opening up a website and just posting, without comment, videos of everything this man says and does. Let me show you what I mean.
Here's a link to the White House record of that press conference. There's a written transcript but it doesn't capture the panic in Bush's eyes or the desperation with which he tries to sell the Same Old Lines to a nation that has long since decided it ain't buying. You'll have to watch the video, which is also available on that page.
And while I'm at it: Am I the only one who can't get the videos on the C-Span site to play? I'm pretty good at navigating websites and I even understand the technologies involved in embedded and streaming video clips. I've now learned how to capture just about any clip and download it to my hard disk for posterity…but I can't even get the C-Span videos to open, and I've attacked them with three different browsers. I know C-Span operates on a budget of about eleven dollars a week, and that's including gas and electricity. But you'd think they could do better than to hire the guy who ran Joe Lieberman's website. Yeesh.