Seeking Inspiration (Bush still searching for Bullhorn Moment)

[RamboLiberal]

Big apology piece for the schmuck.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9678107/site/newsweek/

As he clambered on the back of the simple pickup truck, it was hard not to hear the echo. The audience was a couple hundred National Guard troops, not a few dozen firefighters. And he was holding a microphone, not a bullhorn. But President George W. Bush tried to conjure up a pile of rubble all the same. “We got a lot of work to do,” he told the troops outside New Orleans on Tuesday, “and I'll be telling the people that I've had an honor to meet that out of this rubble is going to come some good.” What rubble? The same stuff he was thinking about in a kindergarten class in Pass Christian, Miss., earlier in the day. “This school district is strong and it’s coming back,” he told a group of puzzled 5-year-olds. “And it’s a sign that out of the rubble here on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi is a rebuilding, is a spirit of rebuilding.”

The elusive hunt for that moment of inspiration, of redemption from those early missteps, has become a peculiarly frustrating experience for the president. Frustrating because the moment always seems to be just outside his reach, no matter how hard he tries. Bush first gathered his rhetorical rubble on his first stop on the ground after Hurricane Katrina, in Biloxi, Miss., where he insisted that “out of this rubble is going to come a new Biloxi.” But that audience was just a bunch of reporters. This week he was talking rubble to two of his favorite groups: the armed forces and the less-disciplined ranks of elementary schoolchildren.

Why does the image fall flat? Maybe because the comparisons with 9/11 are still unfavorable. The delivery isn’t spontaneous or emotional. And the domestic challenges of Katrina remain less inspirational, and more prone to bureaucratic bungling, than the foreign challenges of war and terrorism.

<snip>

Yet he still needs to find his voice, a clearer vision and maybe some better photo ops of his own. In Covington, as he was shaking hands with local folks at the edge of the NBC site, one woman threw him some Mardi Gras beads. Bush dropped them. “I couldn’t catch them in the real Mardi Gras, and I can’t catch them now,” he quipped. When it comes to Katrina, Bush just can’t catch a break.

[Bob3]

1. "why does the image fall flat?" Jesus get quarter and buy a clue

The Image falls flat because it is only image making - there is nothing real about what he's doing he couldn't care less about these people - the real * was off eating cake while New Orleans was flooding. All the photo ops in all the world can't make up for that.

[cliss]

2. I really enjoy reading articles like this.

It gives me a little insight into how hopeless his job is, how doomed he really is.

What's with the "rubble" thing? Why does he keep saying that?

Bush reminds me of a one-trick pony. It can be trained to do only one thing, and then it keeps on doing it over, and over, and over and over.......over....ove

[ladjf]

3. Sorry George, no "bullhorn moments" only "bullshit moments"

and lots of them.

[Lisa]

4. and they didn't have to yell "show us your boobs, Bush"

Brown and Chertoff certainly qualify, thanks very much!