Is George W. Bush Ready for Primetime?

"We cannot let terrorists and rogue nations hold this nation hostile to hold out allies hostile." So said George W. Bush on a recent stump speech and quoted in the Perspectives section (p.15) of the September 4th issue of Newsweek magazine.

In this same issue of Newsweek, in an article entitled Ready For a Wild Ride, the news magazine took a close look a several of the issues facing the candidates including tax cuts, in which Bush was less than prepared to answer detailed questions, or give specifics about his plan. Bush has been slow to answer questions these past two weeks and even when he manages to give an answer it is often incoherent and off message. And just this past weekend in Naperville IL, Bush standing on a stage just prior to making an address, told his vice presidential running mate, Dick Cheney, "there's Adam Clymer, major league asshole from The New York Times." Huh? And he is going to bring integrity and morality back to the Whitehouse?

Add to this, the failure of the Bush campaign to deal fairly with the Gore campaign, or the American people on the issue of the upcoming Presidential debates (one might half expect him the announce that he wants to debate on Disney's Bear and the Big Blue House, or PBS' Romper Room, next) and one has to wonder how George W. Bush ever ascended to the governorship of the nations second largest state.

Could Bush be dodging the debates? Is this a sign that the Bush campaign knows that George W. would be outclassed and seriously, embarrassingly out debated by Al Gore? MSNBC' Jay Serverin wrote on Sept. 4:On Sunday, when virtually everyone in America except the candidates had taken a holiday from politics, one network anchor reported on the evening news that George W. Bush had "finally" responded to the presidential debate challenge. Normally, such a statement would be noteworthy only as another display of gross and/or unprofessional media bias. But this time, there was something more significant going on here: another sign that the Bush campaign was in trouble. He went on to say: IT IS AXIOMATIC that you announce on Labor Day weekend only those things you want nobody to hear about, that holiday period being perhaps the deepest black hole of media coverage in the universe from which no air or light escapes. But that is the time the Bush campaign chose to address the debate issue. Such a strategy does not exactly suggest dealing from a position of strength.

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