If You Believe In Fairies, Clap Your Hands!

Ezra Klein agrees with Matt Yglesias that Bush making a speech a week is not exactly an inpired way of pressing his new PR campaign called “Iraq-is-a-quagmire-instead-of-the-cakewalk-I -promised-but-I’m-resolutely-stupid-so-you-should-vote-for-me-anyway,” because his speeches only make him look bad.

To me, his speeches have always been laughable — not for the content, which is quite often very well done, if completely wrong — but by the overblown and obviously coached delivery combined with the totally blank look in his eye. He’s like a Japanese speaking actor playing a role in phonetic English. No matter how passionately he delivers the lines, the inflection and the rhythm are always off because he doesn’t understand the language he’s speaking.

But as much as I find his speeches to be ridiculous (the one where he evoked the words of Pericles is a particular side splitter) I always remind myself that the bobble-head pundits’ favorite description of any speech he has ever delivered is “he hit it out of the park.”

The mediatools have been hard on Junior these last couple of weeks. They are sure to feel uncomfortable about that and be overcome with the desire to give him a little love. So, don’t be surprised if they blissfully gasp and squirm with heavy lidded Noonanesque pleasure at his masterful masculine prowess tomorrow night.

But, if they do, do not despair. They are mediawhores, after all, and there is so much juicy stuff, from dirty pictures to Iranian spies to Republican civil war going on, that they’ll be easily distracted from their codpiece slobbering.

And it’s always possible that the fact his face looks like he spent the night in a gutter (again) will make even Nooner see him less as a mythic cowboy and more like the inbred frat boy he really is.

What a fitting illustration of a world leader who has fallen flat on his face.