Listen as a College Sophomore Dumbfounds Our President

The RNC has long set up situations to ensure that when President Bush appears in public, it’s a VERY carefully scripted PR event. From making attendees sign a statement on the election trail 2004, to the fake town hall meetings that followed, to preparing staged, rehearsed “question & answer” PR session with our troops, to having fewer press conferences than any sitting president in recent history, Bush does NOT like to speak off the cuff.

Recently he’s been attempting some question & answer sessions which include people complimenting him furiously, almost freakishly with many of the questions asked, until…

Someone went off-script.

That someone was KSU sophomore Tiffany Cooper. Here’s how the Q&A played out:

Cooper: "Recently, $12.7 billion was cut from education, and I was just wondering, you know, how is that supposed to help our futures?"

Your President: "The education budget was cut?" Bush responded. "Say it again. What was cut? At the federal level?"

Cooper: (repeats question)

Your President: “Uh, actually…I think what we did was reform the student-loan
program.” (Actually, according to Becky Timmons, director of government relations for the American Council on Education, "When you take [$12.7 billion] out of the program, you can both hit the lenders and make students and parents pay a lot more when they repay their loans.”)

You have to listen to the audio here, because the text simply doesn't do it justice.
Note the applause Tiffany Cooper gets, and the laughter Bush gets as he's trying to figure out what the hell to say. Commentary provided by Sam Ceder of Air America at the end (video here).

So again, I reiterate the point that I keep making over and over on this site because it’s something most people, including some on the left don’t seem to understand.

It’s not that Bush can’t speak well – he does indeed speak at a 10th grade level and has some strong signs of dyslexia, but that’s NOT THE PROBLEM. Just because you have some trouble with articulation, it doesn’t mean you’re a moron or an idiot on the subject.

I get really angry when people misunderstand this. People say, "oh, he's just tripping up on his words," or, "what, the president can't make a mistake in his speeches?"

No. That is NOT what I'm talking about.

Bush’s problem is that he DOESN’T KNOW THE ANSWERS. He doesn’t do the research, he doesn’t understand the questions, and he doesn’t have enough knowledge, sophistication, or complexity to really process questions on the fly and answer them. He’s like a high school kid trying to fake his way through a history essay he didn’t study for. He is unable to grasp the concepts or provide ANY intellectual insight to build his sentence structure in the first place.

I’m embarrassed when my boss at work does this. When it applies to our president, I am mortified, and frightened.