Avoiding the Question

The press conference that President Bush gave last night was probably one of the worst examples of public speaking I have ever been privy to witness. Now, I'm a pretty open-minded individual and don't have any strong political leanings one way or another, but that speech plus Q&A session was pretty horrible anyway you look at it.

Regardless of how I feel about Bush sending troops to Iraq, or whether I think of him as a good President, the talk last night was an excellent example of long-windedness, rambling, and question dodging.

Damn - if I talked like that when presenting engineering results to our clients, I'd be freaking fired. In every communcations class I've taken (including Toastmasters & Dale Carnegie), we were always taught to answer the question and be as succinct as possible. That was the number 1 rule! It seemed like Bush would start to answer the question, go on some tangent, get lost in his train of thought and then tie something he obviously wanted to say (yet completely unrelated to the question) into the conclusion of his answer. Geez.

My favorite question that he DIDN'T ANSWER:
(Referring to the conflict in Iraq)
QUESTION: "Will it have been worth it, even if you lose your job because of it?"

BUSH: "I don't plan on losing my job. I plan on telling the American people that I've got a plan to win the war on terror. And I believe they'll stay with me. They understand the stakes."

Obviously, if he truly believes what he did is right, he should just say, "Yes, I stand behind my decision 100% that I'm willing to risk my job for it." But then he goes on supporting the soldiers & consoling loved ones. WTF does that have to do with the question?

Damn. Trainwreck, meet Bush. Bush, meet trainwreck. That was pretty awful.

In his defense, to all his critics I must say that HINDSIGHT IS ALWAYS 20/20. No matter what happened or what choices he made, it's so easy (after the fact) to sit back and analyze the situation a million which ways and be critical of what decisions he made. Let's say, for example, that he had good intelligence hinting at the terrorism planned on 9/11 and he launched some sort of pre-emptive strike to prevent it from happening. Which is what some people think he should have done. We'd be in a similar situation today but instead of analyzing his decision to go to war with Iraq, critics would be bashing him on whether he was justified in attacking first. People would be questioning if that made us look like an aggressor instead of acting in self-defense.

Face it - the critics who don't like President Bush, it doesn't matter to them what he does - they're going to disagree with his action no matter what it is. He does Action #1. They say he should've done Action #2. But if he actually did Action #2 instead of Action #1, they'd still be here today condemning his decision. It's so easy to sit back 4 months later and overanalyze everything and say, "yeah, this is what you should've done." Hindsight is always 20/20. Never ever forget that and consider that before you jump on the bandwagon slamming anyone.