Yesterday at a press conference in the Rose Garden, President Bush answered questions about his nomination of Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court, reiterated his opposition to steroids in baseball, and addressed the potential hazards of bird flu (“That’s when it gets dangerous,” noted the president, “when it goes bird-person-person.”) Afterward, bloggers were so busy thrashing the president himself that, for the most part, they neglected their daily chore of thrashing the reporters asking the questions.
Predictably, most of the criticism focused on Bush’s defense of Miers. “In the press conference yesterday, President Bush asked us to trust him since he had seen into her soul like he did with Putin and all that crap,” wrote Best View. “I suspect he was wrong about Putin and this made me suspicious about his soul-peeking with Harriet.”
While an article in the New York Times noted that the president seemed “at ease” during the press conference, bloggers were not exactly “at ease” with that assessment. “Have you heard Bush lately?” asked Into Your Tent I Will Silently Creep. “I think I’ve said it here before, but it really sounds to me like the man’s headed towards some sort of last straw, breaking-point type of thing. He’s almost too testy, too disoriented. At today’s press conference I kept expecting him to be like, ‘Fuck you, Terry. You know what? You can all just bite my weenie.'”
Speaking of biting, Red Dog Bites was barking up the same tree. “I actually think Bush is on the verge of having a breakdown,” noted Red Dog Bites. “The press conference today was very revealing. He cannot seem to put together his thoughts even on the softball questions from the press corps. The swagger is gone. I’m thinking the inner circle is in complete chaos. Cheney calling Rush to tell him that in 10 years he will be glad Miers is on the SCOTUS? That is a little bizarro even in the darkest corners of Limbaughland.”
Meanwhile, from the darkest corners of the Internet, bloggers chose to illuminate the words of former presidential speechwriter David Frum. “The president was visibly angry at his press conference yesterday,” Frum wrote on National Review Online. “Nobody likes criticism, especially when it’s justified. But was he convincing? He sure did not convince me.”
“Yesterday’s White House talking point was that Miers ‘reflects the president’s judicial philosophy,'” continued Frum. “OK. But can she articulate it? Defend it? And persuade others of it — not just her colleagues, but the generations to come who will read her decisions and accept them … or scorn them. That’s the way this president should have thought about this choice.”
“That’s the point, folks,” Confirm Them wrote of Frum’s piece. “We conservatives must not fall into the same mindset as liberals by conflating law and politics. Moreover, why should we be expected to settle for someone who will simply vote the right way? We should expect and demand that the president nominate brilliant legal thinkers to the SCOTUS, like Justices Scalia and Thomas (as he did with Chief Justice Roberts). After all, isn’t that what he promised us in two presidential campaigns?”
Elsewhere, Industrial Blog dared to compare Bush’s performance to another downtrodden, discredited regime — specifically, the New York Jets. “This is the worst pick since the New York Jets selected Blair Thomas second in the 1990 NFL Draft,” noted Industrial Blog. “(Note: Emmitt Smith was selected 17th in that draft.) But at least the Thomas pick was understandable: Blair Thomas had outstanding credentials.”
But, like the Jets this past weekend, the president wasn’t completely shut out. He did score a few points late in the game — especially on the subject of avian flu.
“After spending some time thinking about President Bush’s remarks on avian flu at his press conference this afternoon I find myself surprised at the depth of his knowledge on the topic,” wrote Bird Flu Updates. “He had read Barry’s The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague In History … I don’t know why that’s so shocking to me — probably because I’m not used to politicians thinking ahead about issues that aren’t likely to win or lose them voters in the very short term.”
Andrew Sullivan agreed. “It’s a good sign that the president seems to see the real threat this could pose to the country and basic civil order,” Sullivan wrote on the Daily Dish. “I’m leery of using the military to deal with it, though. Maybe it’s useful to have that option available so we don’t have some kind of paralysis as we did with Katrina. … Still, the president is reassuring that he is on top of this … Notice also that Bush has been reading about the 1918 pandemic. I’ve thrown enough criticism his way lately. Time for some praise on this potentially catastrophic scenario.”
These days, the embattled administration will undoubtedly take the praise however it can get it — even from bird to blogger to blogger.
–Felix Gillette
Felix Gillette writes about the media for The New York Observer.