Giving Credit Where It Is (Unfortunately) Due

I don't like, trust, or want to shake the hand of the President of the United States.  I think W is a dangerous, lying, opportunistic rat bastard.

But from the standpoint of being a communicator, he's getting better all the time.  It may have been true that during his first campaign and term in office he mangled the English language with great regularity and often sounded uninformed.  But his voice always had a folksy timbre that reassured with an aw shucks manner that (almost a majority of) the voters bought.

These days when I hear him speak I hear nothing but confidence. Sure, his complete confidence is scary to me, but it's a mistake that the Democrats made to think that subtlety and nuance wins the mass market.   And he's getting better and better at parsing complex issues in easy to understand ways.  His latest trope is "I've I could wave a magic wand and end terrorism/reduce gas prices/fix social security I would" is a great rhetorical device.  He seems at ease with his role and his power.  And he's able to take a question about the increase in terror attacks and provide a temporal perspective that never seemed to creep into his rhetoric before: now we have to use our armies and agents and hunt people down etc etc but in the long run it will be the proliferation of freedom and democracy that eliminate terror.  Freedom and democracy.  Well that's good stuff that is impossible to object to unless you start gettin' all nuanced about complexity.  And who has time for that?

In his press conference tonight he was expounding on energy policy and talking about how we needed to build infrastructure to support "liquidized natural gas" because the only "safe way to transport natural gas is when it's solid."  That's the kind of statement likely to cause some of us to want to pound the tables and point out that "gas" "liquid" and "solid" are three distinct states of matter. 

But everyone else just heard "safe" and they turn around in the classroom and look at the few raising their hands to point out the faux pas and think: "nerd," "grade grubber," "you're the asshole that raised the curve on the last test," "it's almost time for recess why are you raising your hand."

Yes, he's become good.  Very good.

Comments

[J.]

Ok so I'm feeling like I've overstepped the bounds of my actual intellect through implication in choosing my "handle", but I'm going to post anyway (through embarassment and tears of laughter) because I would like also, to "give credit, where credit is due.

Thank you, thank you very much for the giggle I got regarding the amazing ineptitude of the duly (or was that dully?) elected leadership. My favorite is, of course, the unofficial reasoning for the unprovoked military take-down of a foreign power -- "Of course he's evil, he tried to kill my Dad!!" and I'm paraphrasing. And while I haven't yet crawled into a hole to escape my own occasional lack of "les bon mots"; I don't have his readership. I wonder what his librarian wife says to him when he climbs into bed at the end of another linguistically challenging day?