May 8, 2006
"I would say the best moment was when I caught a 7-1/2-pound largemouth bass on my lake."
That's our Bush, answering the question what was the "most wonderful moment" of his presidency. If you say he's an idiot, is he reeling you in?
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69 comments:
It is physically impossible to imagine President Kerry responding with an answer so charmingly self-deprecating.
Seven Machos: Well put. I agree that it is not "Blackhawk Down." We have lost many helicopters, and it no longer leads to giving up. Even when accompanied by prancing, gleeful locals.
As to the for the fish, I think it was Bush's way of saying: I'm a modest guy. I'm not going to say anything about me is "wonderful."
Walt: And thinking back to Somalia, do you think there was any head-in-sand-putting when we left? And then there was the helicopter crash that ended the attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran, back in the Carter administration? How did that go, do you think? We don't miss your point. We disagree with you.
I agree with the President.
I agree with the President.
(laugh)
Echoing what 7m says, I have to wonder: what part of the Bush constituency has such low expectations of the Presidency, where apparently just showing up is enough? Wow.
Texas leg-pulling. Bush has at times an odd sense of humor in which he does not let in on the joke.
Who hasn't on occasion made an oblique reply to a question that was calculated to interrupt the predictable flow of the conversation? And who would believe that catching a fish would be the "most wonderful moment" of a presidency?
It would be interesting to see how the German paper presented it.
Walt: I'm not a military expert, so there is absolutely no way I can give competent advice on how to win the war. But we must win the war.
I think it's a losing proposition ever to answer such a question, as no one will be content. But he could have said: My Presidency isn't over yet, I expect more wonderful things are coming. Or he could have said that he's not the type of individual to dwell on things, or to rank them.
He could have said something with just a nugget of truth in it. That's all I want.
Geez -- lighten up Francis! For an outdoorsman -- a big bass is a great moment -- especially when he doesn't get to fish on his own lake all that often.
Think about it -- the hardest job in the world (Rep. or Dem.) the guy has some solitude, relative peace and quiet. Isn't it possible that this is a great moment? Almost every moment in his life is fraught with momentous consequences....
So he doesn't give the textbook moment. Didn't we have that with Clinton?
The fact that you guys have your panties in a twist is the very reason why it's a beautiful answer. No answer would please everybody so make it simple and personal and let the major-leaguers howl.
7m, I have pretty low expectations from any politician, but the two things I really want are truth and a little restraint when it comes to spending my money. Is it any wonder I find Bush less than appealing?
"I think there is a similar dynamic here. So much of what Bush says isn't aimed at you, or me, or Ivy-educated professors at Big 10 law schools."
Glad to see your 0745 comment 7M. Though I wouldn't define the group you're trying to describe so narrowly, You know as well as I do that this one was aimed directly at them. Showing contempt for the "urban intellectual class" can't do anything but help the president.
"do you think the current course will end with a self-sustaining Iraqi gov that we can approve of in the next 5 years?"
I have no idea. I'm pretty sure our enemies there aren't going to meekly comply with some plan we come up with, but I wasn't one of those people who thought Iraq would turn into some Norman Rockwell fantasy 20 minutes after we deposed Hussein either, so maybe I'm biased. And the fact that things have gotten worse in Baghdad since the beginning of the war is hardly surprising, since many of the resources devoted to operating that city are now distributed to other areas. You may have noticed we're still in Germany and Japan 60 years later, so it might be awhile.
Our friendly reporter suggests that the President appeared to be joking. Seems about right.
But then our ink stained wretch proceeds to step in a Texas size cow pattie by questioning the relative merit of a 7 1/2 pound large mouth bass.
A record fish? No. A big fish, hell yes. Trust me on this. Landing a 7 1/2 pound large mouth, especially with ultralight tackle, will get your attention.
But as others on this thread have noted, about the only thing the President could do to please some folks is to die. Speaking of death, I can see the headlines now:
Bush Raises Lazarus From Dead: Morticians Hardest Hit
about the only thing the President could do to please some folks is to die.
Oh please, no one sensible wants this. Please stick to reasonable hyperbole.
MadisonMan said...
"... but the two things I really want are truth and a little restraint when it comes to spending my money."
Amen. The fiscal policies are a disaster. We are drowning in debt and increasingly in hock to the Chinese government. The economy is being kept afloat by keeping open the money spigot, plunging us further into debt.
Madison,
"No one sensible."
That's right. Go read the Daily Kos comment section and report back on relative sensibility.
I'd also make a distinction between "wonderful" and "important."
Jim: I think "wonderful" is the more troubling word in the question, the reason he went to the fish. It implies that he got personal fulfilment out of it.
Full text showing below the last 3 questions of the interview:
Q Three last very short questions. What was the most wonderful moment in your terms of being President so far, and what was the most awful moment?
THE PRESIDENT: The most awful moment was September the 11th, 2001.
Q The famous picture when somebody gave you the information?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, that. I think, like all of us, it took a while for the -- it was more than a moment. It was the event and the aftermath. On a situation like that, it takes a period to understand exactly what was going on. When somebody says, America is under attack, and -- you've got to fully understand what that meant. And the information coming was haphazard at best for a while. We weren't sure if the State Department got hit. I'd heard the White House had got attacked. Of course, I was worried that -- my family was here.
And so I would say the toughest moment of all was after the whole reality sunk in and I was trying to help the nation understand what was going on, and at the same time, be empathetic for those who had lost lives.
The best moment was -- you know, I've had a lot of great moments. I don't know, it's hard to characterize the great moments. They've all been busy moments, by the way. I would say the best moment was when I caught a seven-and-a-half pound large mouth bass on my lake. (Laughter.)
Q Perfect.
Q Very last question -- you're a great sports fan.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I am.
Q How important is the international World Cup in Germany? And what is your personal take on who will be at the end, the world champion?
THE PRESIDENT: Listen, the World Cup is a -- first of all, most Americans, up until recently, didn't understand how big the World Cup is. And we're beginning to understand. And the reason why is, a lot of us grew up not knowing anything about soccer, like me. I never saw soccer as a young boy. We didn't play it where I was from. It just didn't exist. I can't even
-- I'm thinking about all the -- between age six, when I can remember sports, and 12 or 13, I just never saw soccer being played.
And so there's a generation of us that really weren't fanatic. There's a new generation of Americans that did grow up on soccer. And there's obviously a huge interest amongst that crowd in the World Cup. And some of us older guys are now beginning to understand the significance of the World Cup around the world. It is the major sporting event worldwide. And it's got to be a great honor for Germany to host the event. And I'm confident that the German people will do a magnificent job of welcoming people from around the world.
And, of course, my team is the U.S. team. They tell me we've got a good team. Now, whether it's good enough to win it all, who knows? But I know they'll try their hardest.
Q Mr. President, thank you very much.
I think it was a wonderful comment, an important comment. I would expect a big boost in his approval ratings, from 32% to well, maybe back up above 1/3 to 36%.
Now if we could somehow get rid of the BDS in the other 2/3rds of the country that HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE our president than all would be swell and we could conclude our war on Eastasia.
Damned liberal media that is always hating on our president and suppressing his wit and wisdom!
Quxxo, time to up the meds again...
But we must win the war.
Dear Professor, can you be more specific?
1) War against Al Qaeda
2) Civil war in Iraq
3) War on drugs at home
4) War on poverty at home
5) War on teh ghey in our schools
6) War on liberal media
7) War on liberal mind suckers in our nation
8) Some combination of the above?
Chris O said:
"even the bass fishermen have turned on him, and he's not going to get them back with folksy schtick."
The presidency is no bed of roses, as anyone can tell from comparing photos taken early and late in the terms of any of the modern incumbents. Bush's time in office, especially the last year or so, must have been like lying on a bed of nails. Perhaps we can take the fish comment at face value, as an attempt by an inarticulate man to express a painful truth.
see how three presidents answered the question "what was the best moment of your presidency?"
to summarize:
carter: the camp david negotiations
clinton: the resolution of the kosovo crisis
bush: that time i caught a big fish on my ranch
Quxxo-beta demonstrates how no answer Bush gave would be acceptable. His non-answer was unaccepatable, and pointing to any action or decision would be similarly attacked. MadisonMan is wrong.
I would have preferred he said: Wonderful moment? When I flew onto the boat deck and said "Mission Accomplished!", and then served a plastic turkey.
And by the way, didn't anyone else think he was channeling Napolean Dynamite? I caught you a delicious bass.
verification word ehopez:
Ehopez quxxo-symbol has taken his Paxil today.
Also, Professor, when you write "we must win this war" would you please let us know:
A) Please define "win". What is the upside to winning the war? What is the downside to winning the war?
B) What losing the war looks like?
C) Any alternatives between winning and losing
D) What you believe is the expected probabilities of A, B, and any of C
E) Please define "must" -- are you willing to serve if asked? Are you for a draft should our leaders tell us that is necessary? Are you for the first use of nukes to counter Iran's nuclear program
F) In your experience as a civilian observer (Vietnam, Grenada, Somalia, Desert Storm, Gulf War I, Operation Iraqi Liberation) what are the three biggest domestic impediments to our progress so far.
Thank you
"I doubt his wife will be pleased," Sabato added. "If he wasn't going to name some official moment, the least he could have done was name some moment with Laura."
Good grief! He cracks a little joke and and someone's humor-challenged enough to want to nitpick his choice of subjects??
Whoops... I just realized that my post can be taken in the wrong light. I'm not making a snarky aside about any comments that appear here above mine. Honestly, I just jumped directly from the story to the comments box here, so I'm only judging that U of Virginia guy who got quoted.
Yeah, this President's a regular guy. A regular guy who OWNS A LAKE!
When I go fishing on my own personal lake, I throw anything under 9 pounds back into the water, because I know I can do so much better! ;-)
Beebear, thanks for the partial transcript that shows both the question and answer in context. It seems a like a perfectly appropriate response to the question.
Uh, Seven Machos:
51% voted for Bush, not 65%. And his party didn't even break a net 50% in house races across the country, winning only a plurality (exaggerated in terms of the number of seats won somewhat by gerrymandering). And if you add up all the votes for all 100 of the last time around Senate races, Democrats have actually come out ahead (Republicans control the Senate because they control the Senate seats of more small states-- a Senator from Wyoming has just as much pull as a Senator from California).
So your assertion that 65% of voters voted for the President and congress the last time around is false.
Republicans did win the 2004 elections, I will give you that. But that is all you can claim.
A 65% win in either the Presidency or Congress would be a historically unprecedented landslide.
ß said... ..........
Oh darn, I can't remember what he said. Okay new rambling point for me.
I have a niece, currently flunking her way through Arizona State (as in, skipping all classes this semester to hang out with her boyfriend who goes to Devry) who can spit a load of venom regarding how unintelligent Bush.
This, despite the fact that she, and Bush, had identical SAT scores, and he actually finished college, however mediocre his grades. I think a lot of critics are similarly intellectually situated; throwing stones that ought to be boomerangs.
Bush is not a brain and policy wonk like Clinton, nor articulate (and neither was his father), but as Seven Machos suggested, you don't get to where he has gotten on pure stupidity, which is what a lot of people accuse him of.
He was probabily trying to exit the interview on a casual, serene note, and opted to keep it simple.
He might have said: We toppled the Talaban; we deposed a dictator; we mainted low unemployment and lifted the stock market to a six year high during two wars and the worst natural disaster; we passed education legislation that has lifted the quality of teachers; we maintained continual pressure on Sudan; we picked two capable Supreme Court judges; we AVOIDED what could be ubber bloody wars with North Korea and Iran; we formented democratic activism in Lebanon and other locales, and we made an attempt at some medicare reform."
But picking any of those invites more questions, especially if the press is not particularly your friend. If you talk about a fish, how can they critique it?
Eli Blake said...
Uh, Seven Machos:
51% voted for Bush, not 65%.
I am not good at math, but I think you have misquoted Seven Machos in your response, as he never says 65% of the people voted for Bush, does he? I suspect that Seven's response about the 65%, on close reading, and in response to the "B" person, actually does not quite make mathematical sense.
Further, in terms of raw people support, Bush Senior got more of the vote than Clinton did in at least one of the elections, where he won about 43% of the vote, and with a majority of people (approx. 19% for Perot, approx. 37% for Bush senior) voting for others. Did that give Clinton cooties? Was it wrong? Does it really matter how you win? Talk of mandates aside, you will generally do what you want to do when elected.
Oops, I should have refreshed screen before posting. Seven Machos saves himself.
Seven Machos said... I do fret that we are losing too much manufacturing, and I think it would be better to have a strong dollar (not too much Bush can do about the latter).
Don't get me wrong, I worry about China, but not about being "in hock." China is buying treasury bonds at horrendous interest rates. That means China is loaning us money at really low interest rates. We could money; they get a promise to pay later at a rate less than most countries' inflation rates. This is really a sweet deal for the United States.
It is nice that we are getting loans on the cheap but ultimately it must be repaid. I do not relish the US being in the position of the worlds largest debtor nation particularly when a large portion of our borrowing is to finance entitlements rather than revitalizing infrastructure or developing new industries and technologies. Our trade imbalance is horrendous. We are buying the products of other countries and even buying back the products of American companies made overseas. What happens when we have nothing to sell? I am not an economist but even I know if you no longer have something to barter you become poor.
What happens when we have nothing to sell?
The Republican party cares nothing about the future. If it did, it would show more fiscal responsibility.
Actually, I'd settle for any fiscal responsibility.
PoliceMan, you're right I was wrong.
It's not at all 35%, it's only 31% that approve the of President.
I don't say that 65% of the American Public hate the President. I say that that is your argument when you and bloggers all cry "Bush Derangement Syndrome" any time someone disagrees with you or the President.
I agree with you that it is illogical to think that 69% of the US hates the US or hates the President.
But apparently 69% do not approve of the president. 65% actively disapprove of the President.
I am glad, Mr. DoctorMan, that you agree with me. 69% of America is not insane, or irrational, or illogical, or suffering from BDS.
But we all disapprove of Mr. Divider Man.
Divider man, Divider man
Doing the things a divider can
What’s he like? it’s not important
Divider man
quxxo: you've missed an obvious angle here: Bush's "wonderful moment" involved torturing an innocent animal to death. Invoke PETA on the cruelty of fishing and Ann's post on D. F. Wallace's article regarding boiling lobsters. Then segue to Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, etc.
Do I have to do your job for you?
Do I have to do your job for you?
That would be nice, thank you. Actually I know a lot of people laughing at the notion of the president catching a big fish in a pond that is stocked with fish. It is slightly more honest than the veep shooting 71 quails in their pens.
Fish in a barrel and flightless quails in a pen.
Ooh, these are the brave smart sharpshooters that keep us safe.
To be fair, Cheney was most likely drunk when he killed them quail.
Does everyone know that ß is a German ligature for SS?
S'okay Illudium-Q36, it's already rotated, we're just waiting for blogger to catch up. Thanks for your concern.
7M, sure, he could have said any of those things, but then they'd be up for argument. There are still terrorists in Afghanistan. We shorted our efforts in that country to depose the tyrant in Iraq. Spreading democracy? Up for debate. Semipermanent tax cuts haven't helped me by a single red cent. That fish story sounds more than "charmingly self-deprecating" (talk about Bush Derangement Syndrome, there's a great example of it); it's a fine dodge of anything of substance. There's your Bush years in a nutshell. The fishing was good.
Holy...! Now that I've read all this, I'm beaten into a daze. For the love of God, folks, this was a JOKE!!! And yet, everyone's using this an an opportunity to rehash their personal favorite Bush-peeve!
Bush: "...I caught a 7-1/2-pound largemouth bass on my lake."
Some folks here:
"OHMIGODIRAQLIARCLUELESSIDIOTPOLL
STUPIDPOLICYDEBTECONOMYAFGHANISTAN
ALQUEDAWARRATINGSDRUNKCHEANEY
HOLYS***OMGWTFBBQ!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Good grief, folks... Lighten up, will'ya? When I said "humor-challenged" in my last post, I was originally only applying it to the guy that was quoted, but it looks like it applies to more than just him.
Going to go wipe the spittle off my face now... in other news, thanks for the preparation, folks. I'm ready to wander through Kos and LGF territory now.
Elizabeth: Please think of me as a cockeyed optimist.
I'm with Tibore. It was probably just a little joke to keep things light. Was there some truth in it? Of course. Isn't that what wit is all about?
Frankly, some of the commenters here seem to think the President has a nondischargeable duty to justify his very existence, in public, every second of the day.
I'm not saying anybody has to like Bush43. But I do. He strikes me as an okay guy. I think his fish answer was a polite, perfectly appropriate response to an intrusive personal question. He's a politician, so he answered it. He's a good politician so he answered it with a deflection. I think most people would have said, "That's none of your business."
What's intrusive about asking a president about the high points of his years in office?
It's not Bush that mystifies me when he utters things like this, it's the reaction of his parishioners.
Elizabeth: A fair question deserves a fair answer. According to the article, the interviewer asked the President to "name the 'most wonderful moment' of his presidency, . . ."
The interviewer did not ask what was his greatest professional accomplishment, or some functional equivalent. She asked for his "most wonderful moment."
"Most" is a superlative. "Wonder" is an emotion. A "moment" is a timeslice of the heart. She was asking for him to disclose his personal feelings. And not just any feelings but his very most special, intimate feelings.
He politely declined the invitation. I respect him for that. Say what you will, he's no media whore. He may be fallible, but he is not crassly manipulative.
Instead he chose to say something humble, modest, funny, and self-deprecating, something he obviously doesn't believe (because it's not that big a fish, which dopey leftists who only shop at Whole Foods would never catch).
For a perch, it's a world record. Half that weight is huge for a perch. I guess you're comparing it to a striped bass, maybe? Fish are fish, I guess?
And Whole Foods sells whole fish by the pound. Why would people who shop there necessarily not know what a given fish weighs?
I don't think you've thought this through very carefully. You want Bush to be self-deprecating, so you've invented a narrative in which his monster perch story fulfills your wishes. You want to bash "dopey leftists," so you assume that none of 'em fish, and that no one who shops at WF knows what a perch would weigh...even as you demonstrate your own ignorance about the average size of perch.
It's baffling.
Phila, there's a good chance a mistake was made in translation. What do we know of Bush's lake?
In the midst of his 1999 campaign run, the man who was once a Yale cheerleader scuffed up and spit-polished his Texas twang. Shortly before he was elected, he bought a sixteen-hundred-acre pig farm in Crawford, Texas, and transformed it into an old family homestead, complete with a man-made lake stocked with largemouth bass cross-bred so that they’re easy to catch.
Guffaw. Stocked with largemouth bass cross-bred so that they're easy to catch.
Bonus question: what happened to George that made him so skered of horsies?
Phila: I'm pretty sure we're talking about a bigmouth, here.
Phila: I'm pretty sure we're talking about a bigmouth, here.
Oh, I can guarantee we're talking about a big mouth here.
Number 6: Thanks, but I don't want to tussle.
Be seeing you.
P.S. I appreciate your allusions. Today's were excellent!
Ann, I hate to tell you this, but the New York News reeled you in by publishing the 'White House version' in which they made the correction already. Bush actually said 'perch.' The actual interview is here
In the last line, Bush says,
"der allerbeste Moment war, als ich einen Siebeneinhalb-Pfund-Barsch aus meinem See geangelt habe."
'Barsch' is 'perch,' not 'largemouth bass' (although the fish was a large mouth bass-- proving that the President isn't much of a fisherman.)
'Barsch' is 'perch,' not 'largemouth bass'
Uh-oh, I guess I'd better return my Harper-Collins German-English dictionary, then, because its entry for English "bass" is "Barsch."
Of course, Bush wasn't speaking German, so what "Barsch" means is not so germane.
So to the Bu$hHitler folks this quote is more proof of his lack of fitness for the position, and the hell that the world has descended to, these past six years.
Meanwhile, outside of the environs of the 'reality-based', we have a clear example of a man who defines himself as a person first, President second.
Ask the same question at about the same point in his administration of Pres. Clinton and he would have talked about his great 'success' in brokering 'peace' between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Which is more illusory, the 'peace' and 'prosperity' of the Clinton Administration, or the peace and joy of reeling in a good sized fish?
Bissage, if that's how you understand the word "wonderful," then your response makes sense to me. We are at odds, there, though, which explains why we have different impressions.
Wonder is more than an emotion; it is used as a noun, an adverb, and an adjective. In all cases, it has a main meaning of expressing something awesome, marvelous, surprising; but it is also used as frequently to mean as an adjective meaning exceedingly, very, fine, excellent and so forth. That's how I take this question: What's the most important moment in your presidency? What was best? There's nothing out of line about that at all, nothing emtionally intrusive.
Elizabeth: Fair enough. Words can be tricky.
thanks, Tibore, you took the words right out of my mouth and gave me a good laugh at the same time.
uh, I mean, HOW DARE YOU avoid the tough questions by making a light-hearted post!!!!
Parsing innocuous comments for deep meaning is a waste of time. A president is not an oracle.
I can't remember a president who talked more clearly about what he was going to do, and then did it. Bush doesn't give arcane signals about what's he's up to. He just says it.
It's amusing, that some will actually go to the far reaches of this foolishness by finding evil in every thing a person does and every microscopic thing he says, and as a sort of necrotic cherry on top of his sundae of bile, blame the object of his impotent derisive hate for not "uniting" him to his cause.
Dude, he offered you his hand, and you spit in it.
It's an offhand comment about an innocuous thing translated from a foreign tongue spoken by a man not prone to using adjectives. Stone tablets optional, I'd say.
It probably was his most wonderful moment. How many things in the conduct of the presidency of the United States could anyone ever feel that simply good about? I think he said a lot in those few words. I'm not a fan of his, but there are moments when I like him and this is one of them.
"Of course I'm only joking. It felt great to be part of bringing health care to so many seniors with our Medicare reform."
That is how a serious, dedicated, and yet modest person might answer the question, if they had something to be proud of, and yet trying to be a man of the people. You score your points with the leading joke, and then backtrack to seriousness.
And as I've been on the faculty of one of the schools mentioned, let me assure you it is possible to skate through Harvard and or Yale ( / Andover / etc) on pure stupidity. In fact the institutional memories (among students, not the nasty liberal faculty elite) at two of the three record many who have done so.
What I don't think symbol guy realized was that both Clinton's and Carter's greatest moments were moments of personal triumph. In other words, they were great moments because they made them look good.
I, for one, don't want a president who is in it for the personal glory. I was frankly surprised at Carter here, but not Clinton. One of the things that I least liked about him was that it never seemed to be about what he could do for the country, but rather, how the presidency would benefit him. Carter, on the other hand, had seemed a bit more modest.
I really don't know why Bush wanted to be president. It obviously wasn't a long held goal, like it was for Clinton, Gore, and Kerry. I think he did want to change the country a bit. But I also sense that 9/11 changed things a lot for him. It went from being a job to being a mission. Not the presidency, but the war on terrorism, and trying to keep America safe.
I liked his statements. In this, he was quite modest. I like that much better than the self-importance shown by Clinton and (surprisingly) Carter. As Mr. Bush points out, it is the people's house he lives in. He is our servant, not the other way around.
p.s. Saying that we are losing the war in Iraq doesn't make it so. We aren't. Saying that there is a civil war there also doesn't make it so. There isn't one. Some sectarian violence, but not nearly as much as many expected.
We have a quarter of a million Iraqi troops under arms, with probably half that many police, all recruited and trained in the last couple of years. Zarkawi admitted recently that they had somewhere around a hundred or so fighters in the Baghdad area, giving us and the Iraqis better than 1000-1 odds in our favor. All they can do any more pretty much is blow up innocents, which has converted most of the clerics to preaching against al Qaeda in their mosques.
The war in Iraq is hardly won, but it is significant that they are delaying rotating in that brigade from Germany. This is going to most likely translate into a reduction of approximately 3,000 troops in early summer, when the troops they were to replace are rotated out. A small sign, but one, nevertheless, that we are winning, not losing, that war.
Let me clarify - the Shiite clerics have all along preached against Zarkawi and al Qaeda. After all, al Qadea is Sunni, and he considers them heretics.
But what has changed in the last six months or so is that a distinct majority of the Sunni clerics are now also preaching against al Qaeda. They realize that we aren't the ones indiscriminately killing innocents, including many children - al Qaeda is. And that is clearly against Islam.
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