Demagogue

Bush was not-so-graceful under pressure today, as evidenced by this comment he made while being peppered with questions about the war in Iraq.

"I think about Iraq every day. Every single day, because I understand we have kids in harm's way."

Wow, he's a poet and...well, you know.

I'm not sure why this comment popped out to me as particularly odd, as Bush's malapropisms are as common as they are famous. Maybe it's because this isn't an understandable linguistic error, it's as though he's defending himself against phantom claims that no one is actually making. Or because it makes him sound like a little kid explaining why their room isn't clean yet-- well they "thought" about it, as though that counts the same as actually "doing" something. (Although it does irk me whenever people refer to our armed forces as "kids" considering that the enlistment cut-off age is 39 now. It's sort of like referring to the troops as "boys," it's just not accurate and it diminishes them all somehow.) Frankly, at this point in his public life as a high-profile politician Bush should have had enough practice to avoid quixotic, clumsy statements like this one.

It's comments like these that really make me wonder if years from now we're going to find out that Bush, just like his emulated Reagan, had something going on medically that will help explain much of his inexplicable behavior while he was in office.