Lord, I was born a Ramblin' Man...
POTUS is trying to regain his Man-of-the-People image by ratcheting up the informality and aw-shucks humor:
As he takes to the road to salvage his presidency, Bush is letting down his guard and playing up his anti-intellectual, regular-guy image. Where he spent last year in rehearsed forums with select supporters, these days he is more frequently throwing aside the script and opening himself to questions from audiences that are not prescreened. These sessions have put a sometimes playful, sometimes awkward side back on display after years of trying to keep it under control to appear more presidential.
Call it the let-Bush-be-Bush strategy. The result is a looser president, less serious at times, even at times when humor might seem out of place. Aides used to dread such settings, worried about gaffes or the way Bush might come across in spontaneous exchanges. But with his poll numbers somewhere south of the border, they concluded that Bush handles back-and-forth better than he once did -- and that they have little left to lose.
An example:
President Bush was taking questions from an audience the other day when he was asked about the immigration debate raging in Washington.
"It's obviously topic du jour ," he said.
The audience laughed at the famously Francophobic Texan's faux accent.
"Pretty fancy, huh?" Bush asked, mocking himself. "Topic du jour ?"
The audience laughed again.
"I don't want to ruin the image," he added conspiratorially.
Well, if it works, what the heck...
Zimbabwe's downward spiral is now being displayed in the most sickening fashion: ordinary Zimbabweans who can no longer afford to feed their children are abandoning newborn babies.
The dumping of babies, along with what doctors describe as a “dramatic” increase in malnourished children in city hospitals, is the most shocking illustration of the economic collapse of a country that was once the breadbasket of southern Africa.
The dead gutter babies are the most pitiful victims of a government that believes it can starve its people into compliance, or death, turning Zimbabwe into the only country in the region with a shrinking population.
Of course, none of this stops Mugabe from slamming the West for "world hunger", alongside his buddy - leftist dictator Hugo Chavez.
Those of us here in the United States have been chuckling at the French insistence that modernity kindly stop at the shores of La Republique. But the CPE debacle might cost Dominique de Villepin his political backing from Jacques (article in French).
As he takes to the road to salvage his presidency, Bush is letting down his guard and playing up his anti-intellectual, regular-guy image. Where he spent last year in rehearsed forums with select supporters, these days he is more frequently throwing aside the script and opening himself to questions from audiences that are not prescreened. These sessions have put a sometimes playful, sometimes awkward side back on display after years of trying to keep it under control to appear more presidential.
Call it the let-Bush-be-Bush strategy. The result is a looser president, less serious at times, even at times when humor might seem out of place. Aides used to dread such settings, worried about gaffes or the way Bush might come across in spontaneous exchanges. But with his poll numbers somewhere south of the border, they concluded that Bush handles back-and-forth better than he once did -- and that they have little left to lose.
An example:
President Bush was taking questions from an audience the other day when he was asked about the immigration debate raging in Washington.
"It's obviously topic du jour ," he said.
The audience laughed at the famously Francophobic Texan's faux accent.
"Pretty fancy, huh?" Bush asked, mocking himself. "Topic du jour ?"
The audience laughed again.
"I don't want to ruin the image," he added conspiratorially.
Well, if it works, what the heck...
Zimbabwe's downward spiral is now being displayed in the most sickening fashion: ordinary Zimbabweans who can no longer afford to feed their children are abandoning newborn babies.
The dumping of babies, along with what doctors describe as a “dramatic” increase in malnourished children in city hospitals, is the most shocking illustration of the economic collapse of a country that was once the breadbasket of southern Africa.
The dead gutter babies are the most pitiful victims of a government that believes it can starve its people into compliance, or death, turning Zimbabwe into the only country in the region with a shrinking population.
Of course, none of this stops Mugabe from slamming the West for "world hunger", alongside his buddy - leftist dictator Hugo Chavez.
Those of us here in the United States have been chuckling at the French insistence that modernity kindly stop at the shores of La Republique. But the CPE debacle might cost Dominique de Villepin his political backing from Jacques (article in French).
posted by Saket Vemprala at
3:16 PM
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