I Heart President Bush?

So sue me, I love it when President Bush takes questions at a press conference.  It was so delightful to curl up with this morning with my chai and see those lovely words, “Breaking News,” come across the screen. 

I’ve tuned in for almost every single one of the President’s press conferences, and I am not embarrassed to say that I love every minute of them.  I think that we liberals too easily dismiss him as an idiot.  He’s not.  He’s charming and folksy and good ol’ fashioned fun!  Remember those polls about Americans who voted for the guy they could “grab a beer with”? 

Apart from the few moments where President Bush is looking truly clueless (usually when he’s reading outloud), he actually appears engaged at press conferences when journalists are asking the questions.  He has a tendency to go into robot mode when mindlessly repeating Karl Rove message points, but he magically manages to recapture our attention with a self-effacing joke or – even better – a jab at one of the White House Press Corps (I loved him poking fun at David Gregory this morning about “hoarding questions,” or asking if the Press Corps remembered their helmets when the NBC camera came loose).  Check out the White House’s transcripts for all the laughter.

But funny only goes so far.  If only the President could bring this kind of attention to the real job of governing, rather than trying to win us over with a smokescreen of funny jokes and false attempts at transparency… and if only a majority of the American people hadn’t voted for the guy who brought us the most frat guy fun…