George W. Bush, Explained Part 2
Apparently in his new book Decision Points George W. Bush describes the worst moment of his presidency as when Kanye West said that he didn’t care about black people during the Katrina telethon.
Seriously, WTF?
It wasn’t when 3,000 people died in 9/11.
It wasn’t when Bin Laden got away in Tora Bora.
It wasn’t when he found out there were no WMDs in Iraq.
It wasn’t when 1,800 people died in a devastating flood in New Orleans while he galivanted around on vacation.
It was when he was criticized. Oy!
Also, Balloon Juice points us to this devastating review of Bush’s memoir. It describes Bush’s retelling of his worst moment this way:
This blindness to visual imagery is quite a motif, judging by Times extracts and an interview with its editor. Apart from being attacked for indifference to black people by Kanye West, the rapper Obama dismissed as a jackass, all his greatest regrets are pictorial public relations disasters.
His sadness over Hurricane Katrina is not for the victims in New Orleans, as Mr West understood, but for the damage done to his reputation by that snap of him staring blankly and aloofly down on the catastrophe from the window of Air Force One. His paramount distress over Iraq is not over the loss of life, civilian and military, but how that banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished” on the aircraft carrier came to make him look naive and vainglorious. He reveals his shallowness and vapidity with these reflections in the most crystalline of clarity, and hasn’t a notion he is doing so.
It takes a certain minimal intelligence for the truly dim to have a notion of their own dimness, but this is denied him.
It’s all about him.
Vapid and shallow are perfect descriptions. I hope I live long enough to see historians go all Kanye on his butt.
Didn’t he once say that his best moment was when he caught a bass?
I can has a Prezidesey.
Does this “post” really begin with the word “apparently”??????? Seriously? How ’bout actually reading the book or watching the various interviews first. I’m not really expecting any sort of fair treatment of Bush from folks on this blog, as your own biases are well known and documented every day, but if you’re going to attack someone, can you do it without at least doing the legwork first?
“Apparently” the posters at KL are so lazy they’ll just pass along any gossip that favors their own liberal bias.
I’ll reserve judgment until I read the book. There have been good reviews and bad reviews, as is the case with every book. I read Biden’s book, I read McCain’s book, I tried to read Obama’s book. I won’t read Palin’s book after her support of O’Donnell. But, if folks are going to comment here, I would think you’d want to be informed. Seriously.
We don’t have to guess what he said, he said it to Matt Lauer.
So, I have to read his stupid book to comment on what Bush said on TV? Are you high?
Have you read Obama’s memoirs first before you criticize him?
Just because you don’t want to believe he said it, Publius, doesn’t mean he didn’t say it.
If you don’t like that link, here’s another:
His book:
His interview with Matt Lauer:
Matt Lauer reading from the book, to Bush:
You’re right, it shouldn’t say “apparently” because it is what Bush said.
Jinx
UI for the kill.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25546334/
550 metric tons of yellow cake uranium
shhh it’s a secret
Uhhh, wait a minute here guys. Bush said that calling him a racist was an all time low, not in terms of the worst moment of his presidency, but simply in terms of the unfair criticism he received. “I faced a lot of criticism . . . the suggestion I was racist . . . represented an all time low.” He’s talking about the criticism he received and said that was the most unfair. C’mon. In your blind fury and zeal to criticize Bush, you’re just taking this stuff completely out of context.
And follow the dialogue carefully with Lauer. When Lauer asks at the end: “You’re not saying that the worst moment in your presidency was watching the misery in Louisiana. You’re saying it was when someone insulted you because of that.”
Bush’s immediate response is “No.”
So, he’s making it clear that he feels it was the most unfair criticism he received, not the very worst moment of his presidency. I have a feeling we’d all agree that 9/11 represented the worst moment during Bush’s presidency, and indeed one of the worst moments in US history.
C’mon you knuckleheads.
So, he’s making it clear that he feels it was the most unfair criticism he received, not the very worst moment of his presidency. I have a feeling we’d all agree that 9/11 represented the worst moment during Bush’s presidency, and indeed one of the worst moments in US history.”
Clarity was never one of GWB’s strong points & his lack of clarity continues in both the excerpts of his book and his interview with Lauer. “ALL TIME LOW” means just that. The lowest possible–EVER. GWB was never very good with the spoken word. Apparently he’s not so great with the written word, either.
I’m a tradesman who never went to college, but even I have a basic grasp of the English language, both written & spoken. GWB is an Ivy League grad who can barely speak a coherent sentence. That’s scary.
5 to 7 minutes. Bush sat stunned and Cheney took the reigns. It worked out so well for all of us.