Host-in-chief? President Bush continues practice of taking audience questions
WASHINGTON (AP) — Move over, Oprah. President Bush is making himself into television’s newest talk show host by making audience participation a feature of his appearances.
Our Glorious Leader’s handlers will tell you that the questions aren’t prescreened, but there can be little doubt that the crowds at one of his “town hall meetings” certainly are. If you listen to the questions, what you hear is generally a collection of drooling sycophants who couldn’t ask a tough question if their life depended on it. (e.g.- “When are we going to see our lovely First Lady running for office?”)
Bush has been taking questions from audience members in recent speeches, and the White House says none has been prescreened. It’s a throwback to the folksy style on the campaign trail that helped him win re-election and a departure from the heavily scripted speeches that were the norm last year.
Is it any wonder that Our Glorious Leader is more and more beginning to represent the Boy in the Bubble than the President of the United States? I suppose it’s becoming increasingly difficult to come up with believable propaganda opportunities, but fortunately for Bush’s handlers don’t want to think. They want to believe. And if they’re Republicans, they’ll believe pretty much anything they’re told to believe.
Listening to Our Glorious Leader in this format, though, is to realize what a smirking fool the man is. Half-truths, platitudes, and lame jokes hardly make for effective public policy, but when you’ve been drinking the KoolAid as long as his hand-picked and thoroughly-screened audiences have been, people are going to think you’re a hero anyway.
