Bush Appears on Law & Order

In Bush’s Veteran’s Day speech, he lashed out at Democrats in a sad attempt to shield himself from public dissatisfaction. He also spewed rhetoric, seemingly in answer to all manner of questions no one was asking, while making no attempt to answer the ones we are. Bad move. He should have stayed out of the spotlight. His making a speech hasn’t, yet, helped his popularity and this was, certainly, no exception. The general public (and we’re not talking about political wonks), aren’t really following the “WMD Intelligence” story anymore. Neither are they all that concerned with the details of that and/or other stories. Not that they’re getting details; there are too many stories right now for them to receive details on any on the nightly news, which is where your average Joe gets their news. What the public has, right now, is a general impression based on their own situations and the general buzz one gets while half-paying attention; a headline here, a Late Show joke there. Things aren’t going well, they can feel it. Polls have been showing that for a long time now. What Bush did, by trying to rejustify his actions and redirect blame on Friday, was put his face all over the news and remind people of why we are where we are. He did himself a disservice. He looked guilty.

It reminded me of those cop shows where a couple of detectives go pick up a suspect at his home for questioning and the suspect just can’t keep his mouth shut in the interrogation room, thereby incriminating himself and convincing the detectives they, indeed, have the right guy and that it’s just a matter of time before they have all the proof they need to win at trial.
Bush said, “I was right here Saturday night.”
And we thought, “How did he know we were going to ask where he was on Saturday night?”
We asked, “Did you go anywhere else on Saturday?”
He said, “I was nowhere near a liquor store.”
And we thought, “Who said anything about a liquor store?”
We asked, “Do you own a gun, Mr. President?”
“Yes, but it’s not a .38 Special”, he explained.
And we thought, “But we didn’t mention what caliber bullet they dug out of the liquor store clerk.”

There were plenty of witnesses on the other side of the glass while our favorite suspect ran off at the mouth, and they were probably thinking, “Shut up. Just, shut the fuck up!”, and sweating over the events and poll numbers of the last several months. The Democrat’s job is to convince them to testify to save their own skins.

Democrats need not defend themselves right now, lest they, themselves, look like the man handcuffed to a chair behind the two-way mirror. Democrats need only to keep attention on the business at hand; not public relations or marketing, but the business of proving their case.