Would You Buy a Used Car From This Man?

By DHinMI

When I was a kid I loved to go to my great aunt and uncle's house.  My aunt was an amazing cook, they had a great dog, and in the basement a mini-pinball machine and a pool table.  But as I've gotten older, one of my most vivid memories of their basement was the classic poster of a smiling, smarmy Richard Nixon with the caption "Would You Buy a Used Car From This Man?" 

I thought of that poster today when I read this funny, almost absurd column by the Washington Post's Dana Milbank:

For President Under Duress, Body Language Speaks Volumes

It's only 6:17 a.m. Central time, and President Bush is already facing his second question of the day about Karl Rove's legal troubles.

"Does it worry you," NBC's Matt Lauer is asking him at a construction-site interview in Louisiana, that prosecutors "seem to have such an interest in Mr. Rove?"

Bush blinks twice. He touches his tongue to his lips. He blinks twice more. He starts to answer, but he stops himself.

"I'm not going to talk about the case," Bush finally says after a three-second pause that, in television time, feels like a commercial break.

Only the president's closest friends and family know (if anybody does) what he's really thinking these days, during Katrina woes, Iraq violence, conservative anger over Harriet Miers, and legal trouble for Bush's top political aide and two congressional GOP leaders. Bush has not been viewed up close; as he took his eighth post-Katrina trip to the Gulf Coast yesterday, the press corps has accompanied him only once, because the White House says logistics won't permit it. Even the interview on the "Today" show was labeled "closed press."

But this much could be seen watching the tape of NBC's broadcast during Bush's 14-minute pre-sunrise interview, in which he stood unprotected by the usual lectern. The president was a blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts. Bush has always been an active man, but standing with Lauer and the serene, steady first lady, he had the body language of a man wishing urgently to be elsewhere.

The fidgeting clearly corresponded to the questioning. When Lauer asked if Bush, after a slow response to Katrina, was "trying to get a second chance to make a good first impression," Bush blinked 24 times in his answer. When asked why Gulf Coast residents would have to pay back funds but Iraqis would not, Bush blinked 23 times and hitched his trousers up by the belt.

When the questioning turned to Miers, Bush blinked 37 times in a single answer -- along with a lick of the lips, three weight shifts and some serious foot jiggling. Laura Bush, by contrast, delivered only three blinks and stood still through her entire answer about encouraging volunteerism...

Certainly, Bush retained many of the gestures that work well for him: the purposeful but restrained hand gestures, the head-tilted smile of amusement and the easy laugh. But he seemed to lose control of the timing. He smiled after observing that Iraqis are "paying a serious price" because of terrorism.

As Lauer went through his introduction, the presidential eyes zoomed left, then right, then left and right again, then center, down and up at the interviewer. The presidential fidgeting spiked when Lauer mentioned the Democratic accusation that Bush was performing a "photo op." Bush pushed out his lower front lip, then licked the right corner of his mouth. Lauer's query about whether conservatives "are feeling let down by you" appeared to provoke furious jiggling of the right leg.

Of course it's probably unfair to compare anyone's fidgeting to the bizarrely affectless Stepford wife-like Laura Bush...I mean, the calm manner of "the serene, steady first lady."  Nevertheless, it's been widely noted that Bush has looked spooked for some time (even if those comments have lacked quantitative analysis of winkin', blinkin' and nods).  As I argued a few months back, during an earlier crescendo of Plame Game actvity, Bush is most certainly terrified of being adrift without Boy Genius/Turd Blossom to administer daily tutorials, to make decisions, and to ruthlessly destroy the reputations of anyone who stands in the way of George Bush's exercise of power (which in reality is Karl Rove's exercise of power). 

It appears that Rove's distractions have left the President bereft of ways to appear decisive.  [It's never been clear to me that Bush actually is decisive, but his handlers, Rove foremost, have been very effective at packaging Bush as a decisive leader.]  He's still trying to get Katrina right on his eighth trip to the Gulf Coast.  He's clueless on Iraq.  Important swaths of his base are squawking about Harriet Miers, regardless of how many times he tells people that she attends church.  He can't stop jittering around like a 3 year old about to wet his pants.  [And for all we know, that may be way he appears under duress.] 

Whatever happens to Rove, it's clear that we're now living through the longest lame duck presidency in at least 100 years.  That raises lots of questions about what will happen for the next three years.  It's certainly not one of the more important ones, but one question I have is how long until someone produces that poster with George W. Bush asking "would you buy a used car from this man?"

Comments

[Meteor Blades]

My first newspaper boss - an alternative newspaper, mind you - had one of those posters right behind his desk. He refused ever to put Nixon's name in the newspaper, always referring to Tricky as the President or, often, "that man in the White House."

When Bush first started his public crumbling - which Milbank and numerous other reports and commentaries have recently indicated seems to be in crescendo - I worried a great deal about the badger effect. The badger is a tough little weasel which, when wounded or cornered, is more dangerous than when it's well-fed and in a good mood. What if the President, wounded by glaring evidence of his own incompetence and the incompetence of the cronies he's hired, battered by policy failures at home and overseas, cut adrift by his CEO-in-fact Dick Cheney, bereft of the undivided attention of Karl Rove, attacked by once-fawning members of his own party, what if he turned badger on us and bit somebody - like, say, Iran or Syria, in some futile but instinctual effort to shore up the polls he says he never pays attention to?

Of late, however, even though I still think Bush is weaselly, he doesn't impress me as a badger, more like a possum. If he could get away with playing dead right now, he'd be lying down right next to the podium.

[Crab Nebula]

I'll never forget when his daddy checked his watch during his debate with Bill Clinton. I think the correct interpretation of the emotional charge behind this gesture and these by the son is contempt. He is suppressing his contempt at his questioners and his anger at being questioned. It leaks out in all these tics and shakes and blinks and lip purses.

He appears to be one messed-up guy. And who but an enabling codependent would marry such an angry addict?

[DemFromCT]

interesting polling report essay;

A Presidency On Life Support

[baked potato]

Or even, "Would you buy a used war from this man?"

Right on Crab Nebula about the suppressed contempt. Remember Debate 1? They didn't know he'd be on camera while he ran his little "I ain't listenin' worth shit" routines. Lucky for him they wised up by the next debate.

[Voice]

I've long believed he's a textbook sociopath -- he seems incapable of genuinely connecting with his daughters or, really, his wife and god knows the average American isn't even on the radar. His "authentic" affection seems reserved for those who believe he can do no wrong: Condi, Harriet, Karen (who you can just picture writing mash notes to him in prison. . . ahh, those sociopaths! even a few bodies discovered under the brush piles on the ranch can't dampen their animal appeal)

He gives me the willies when I watch him. So I don't.

[kant]

Did Judy plead the 5th amendment? Check out my diary and comment if you will.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/13/9298/0472

[al-Fubar]

Crab, I agree that a lot of what we have seen from both Bushes in the past was suppressed contempt. What we're seeing now, though, is raw fear.

Bush is a coward, as his bizarre behavior on 9/11 showed, and think what a scary place he's finding himself in now. Suddenly everyone is being mean to him - even Republicans are being mean to him. He must want to curl up in his special blankie and make it all go away.

-- Rick

[DHinMI]

Rick, I agree that he probably feels like everyone is being mean to him. And something I didn't mention in the post but which fits in with what we're both saying is that besides Rove, his main "special bankees" are no longer in the White House at his side. Condi is over at State; Karen Hughes is doing whatever it is she finally got around to doing, about six months after she was nominated for the job; and now Miers is busy getting a new coif, an open-necked blouse and instructions on how not to apply eye liner in preperation for her hearings before Senate Judiciary. So the only person he can lean on is Laura, and who the hell knows what that's like.

Special bankee indeed.

[caj]

Have you ever seen Bush in church? Saw him in C-Span at one of the official services. He's like a little kid, fidgetting, looking around, tapping his program, looking at his shoes, rocking back and forth, until Laura gently puts her hand on his forearm and he is stilled.

Sheesh.

[tim]

it should read "used war" in bush's case.

[DHinMI]

He probably won't try to sell the used war, he'll just defalt on the loan.