Well. I guess I really missed something. The folks over at NRO's The Corner have imploded. The crazy thing about pundits is that they think that Joe Sixpack is as interested in politics as they are paid to be. One appearance on MSNBC is not going cause the collapse of Bush's re-election bid.

It's Sunday fer chrissakes. I'm sure that the late night TV gang will have plenty of material. That's as far as the damage will go..and that ain't far.

On a more humorous note, poster DValdron over at The Smirking Chimp had this to say about Bush's performance:

I don't know how it plays out in real life, but on paper it's brutal.

Bush has this very weird, very very harsh speaking style.

His speech is full of repetitive cadence, he'll often utter two consecutive preliminary sentences that don't have any significant content, but are basically the same. Or he'll make contradictory statements, without any admission that they're contradictory:

"And so we ? I expected there to be stockpiles of weapons. But David Kay has found the capacity to produce weapons. And when David Kay goes in and says we haven't found stockpiles yet, and there's theories as to where the weapons went."

In this passage, note the repetitions in three lines. David Kay twice, stockpiles twice, weapons three times.

And note the disconnects. 'I expected stockpiles'. The next sentence though, doesn't refer to stockpiles, it confirms capacity. But capacity isn't asserted or at issue. So only then does it go to acknowledging no stockpiles, and then it qualifies with 'theories as to where the weapons went' which implies through the backdoor that there are stockpiles.

To give you an idea as to how lunatic this is, consider this semantically identical statement: "We expected there to be cows. We confirmed that there were hamsters. There are no cows, but there will be cows."

And note the grammatical faux pas. This is another continuing feature in Bush's speech. He's continually mangling his syntax, inverting tenses, changing his thought in the middle of a sentence, breaking off sentences, revising and amending as he speaks. The overall effect is to make it extremely difficult to understand or follow where he's going. It's like taking a 4x4 over a bumpy dirt road without shocks, after a while, its just one lurch after another.

Here's another amazing passage:

"But David Kay did report to the American people that Saddam had the capacity to make weapons. Saddam Hussein was dangerous with weapons. Saddam Hussein was dangerous with the ability to make weapons. He was a dangerous man in the dangerous part of the world."

Saddam is repeated three times. Weapons is repeated three times. Dangerous is repeated four times.

The passage is devoid of any semantic content whatsoever. It doesn't mean anything, it's not about anything. It's just continual button pressing. "Saddam/ Weapons/ Danger Danger"

Here's another irrational passage, but slightly more subtle:

"And I made the decision to go to the United Nations. By the way, quoting a lot of their data in other words, this is unaccounted for stockpiles that you thought he had because I don't think America can stand by"

Note the complete breakdown of pronouns here. Them/You/He/I/Us. It's almost incoherent. But if you spend some time unravelling the structure... What he says is:

"Them (the UN) believed in wmd. Them are you. You believed in wmd's. I and Us are the same. We can't stand by. It's still incoherent. But it at least reverts back to a tribal code drum beat.

Note the complete semantic lunacy of this passage: "this is unaccounted for stockpiles that you thought he had because I don't think America can stand" Who's the actor here, where's the motivation, what's the subject, what does this sentence mean?

Here's an amazing compounding of negatives:

"Well, but what wasn't wrong was the fact that he had the ability to make a weapon. That wasn't right."

Again, I don't know what this means.

This is anti-rational thinking. Bush has perfected a mode of speech which seems antithetical to logic. It explicitly disconnects concepts, separates ideas and prevents them from linking coherently. It's a sort of speech which appears tailor made to break down any capacity for thought, it operates on the level of word association and visceral gut reaction.

I can't decide which is worse: That this is the way this man actually thinks, which has horrifying implications considering he's President. Or that this man is deliberately doing this to prevent us from appreciating or thinking.[Global sic]

I think DValdron gets it absolutely right. On paper it's brutal, and in the minds of pundits it's really important. But to most folks, this isn't likely to move them in any particular direction. Bush supporters are still likely Bush supporters, and Bush detractors are likely to remain so.

It is only important to pundits because that is exactly what they are paid to do.

It'll be of some interest how Limbaugh, the crew at the Weekly Standard and other conservative sources spin this.

I think we all know how the left is going to view this. I think DValdron has given us a taste of what to expect. Shrill? Sure. But fun too. :)