The President as Average Joe: Trying to Boost Support, Bush Brings Banter to the People
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.
I suppose that the latest PR strategy being pursued by Our Glorious Leader shouldn’t come as any surprise. After all, the Dubya Presidency has always been more about appearance than substance, so we’ve really been subjected to five years of ever-changing propaganda campaign. This latest iteration is no different, as Our Glorious Leader continues to search for a way into which to convince the American sheeple that he is truly a generous, beneficent, and gifted leader. Right; and I’m the Queen of England.
Five years of George W. Bush, and what it’s really been all about is Our Glorious Leader’s need to be loved. Though he may no longer be taking part only in sanitized “town hall meetings” in which the audience has been thoroughly screened and vetted for loyalty and ideological reliability, his latest tack is not far removed from this strategy.
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.
“It shows the range of his personality, the humor,” said White House counselor Dan Bartlett. He said the White House has worked to put Bush out in public more, noting that he has had news conferences twice as often in his second term as in his first. “In a couple different ways, we’ve expanded his exposure,” Bartlett said.
In the past couple of weeks, Bush has taken audience questions at two events, in addition to two news conferences. He has answered expansively, sometimes ranging beyond the talking points. He does not brutalize the English language as much (although last week he mangled the name of his ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, pronouncing it Kahl-i-had ). And he banters with audiences in a way he doesn’t when delivering a conventional speech.
This is a President who clearly is trying to connect with a public he’s never bothered to try and connect with previously. Judging by the results thus far, Our Glorious Leader doesn’t have a freakin’ clue. His “Once they get to know me how can they not help but love me?” strategy only serves to point up how little he understands what he has done to further divide this country over the past five years.
Personally, what I find most offensive is Our Glorious Leader’s frat-boy humor. His “Just Plain Folks” shtick is just plain stupid and insulting.
To many critics, such forums still feel contrived, and the fratboy towel-snapping humor unbecoming. Nor does the new format mean Bush always answers questions as directly as inquisitors might like. When an Egyptian asked him at a forum in Washington last week whether he would support Gamal Mubarak if he succeeded his father, Hosni Mubarak, as president of Egypt, Bush declined to answer: “That’s a question-I-don’t-answer question.”
At the end of the day, this latest PR/propaganda campaign seems little more than yet another desperate attempt by the Bush White House to convince the American sheeple that Our Glorious Leader is “just plain folks”. Whatever….
Perhaps this is destined to be Our Glorious Leader’s legacy…the triumph of substance over style. Still glad you voted for Dubya??
WE DESERVE BETTER.
