Hijexx wrote:
] The footage was the most disturbing thing on television in
] some time. There was US President George W Bush, being prepped
] for his televised declaration of war. It was not the combing
] of his hair, the only aspect of the coverage reported by any
] American media outlet (the Washington Post in this case),
] which was cause for embarrassment; everyone expects that.
] Rather, it was the demeanour — I would say antics — of the
] president himself.
]
] Like some class clown trying to get attention from the back of
] the room, he started mugging for his handlers. His eyes darted
] back and forth impishly as he cracked faces at others around
] him. He pumped a fist and self-consciously muttered, "feel
] good," which was interestingly sanitised into the more mature
] and assertive, "I'm feeling good" by the same Washington Post.
]
] He was goofing around, and there's only one way to interpret
] that kind of behaviour just seconds before announcing war on
] Iraq: the man is an idiot.
]
] ...
]
] I've seen the footage they're talking about. It's not the
] hair combing, it's the antics. I watched as he sat there
] trying to practice his serious face and asking if it was good
] or not. It was pretty sickening.

The Washington Post article is here, btw:
 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1027-2003Mar20.html

Now, I haven't seen the footage itself (if anyone has a link to it, let me know), but I would like to offer an alternative view, especially because I've been doing a lot of public speaking myself lately.

Basically, it's *scary* to get up on stage. Even when I'm giving a talk that I've given literally dozens of times before, I get nervous right before I speak. My palms sweat, I fidget, I run through the script in my head, I worry about how the audience is going to receive what I say, I worry whether I'll communicate the emotional impact that I intend to communicate, and I do all kinds of absurd little things to try and calm myself down and/or psych myself up. Then, once I'm actually on stage, I usually go on autopilot and I'm fine, though I may not even be consciously aware sometimes that I'm speaking. Indeed, on a couple very stressful occasions where I was speaking to enormous audiences, I'd have people coming up to me after a talk and telling me what a great job I did, and how moved they were by some of what I'd said, but I would have absolutely no memory of some of the parts of the talk that I'd just given, because I was so nervous while I was speaking!

When I watch Bush speak (and also sometimes when I watch Colin Powell or Tony Blair speak), perhaps because I'm identifying so strongly with the *process* of public speaking, I can picture what's going on behind the scenes. Like during Bush's "State of the Union" speech, while I was seeing him up there on the podium, I could simultaneously mentally imagine all the rehearsals. I could see the deliberate ebb and flow of the words in the speech, and I could see a big moment coming up, like even though Bush is saying one thing, in the back of his mind I could imagine a little voice saying, "Okay, in a few sentences, we've got that major point to make. It's important, I know it's important, my staff knows it's important, and I know it's important to communicate just how important it is... Okay, now it's just two sentences away, start increasing the tempo... Coming up in a sentence, here we go, make sure to deliver this with passion... Almost there..." And then *bam* the big sentence comes up, and he flubs the line, because he was so worried about delivering it right, that he lost track of the exact words that he was supposed to use!

There are some presidents who had a real knack for speaking with passion, and getting people motivated just by listening to them. I don't think Bush usually has that knack, though there are a few notable exceptions (like when he was talking through the megaphone at groundzero right after September 11th).

Because of that nervousness and awareness of how important his "motivational" presence is, I see it as perfectly understandable that he'd be nervous before going on TV to make a declaration of war! I'd be a nervous wreck, regardless of how strongly I felt about whether it was the right thing to do. I'd be thinking, "Oh my god, every word I say will be scrutinized, every breath, every facial tic, every piece of lint on my shirt, every movement of my eyes back and forth, and the next few minutes are going to be played over and over again in news broadcasts and history classrooms for generations."

In other words, regardless of whether I agree or disagree with him on certain issues, I'm not going to fault him for 90 seconds of psyching himself up before going on live TV to make a profoundly historic announcement. Yes, he's President of the United States. But he's also human.

Anyway, just my $0.02,

Elonka :)

George's little antics