President Pathetic

Boy wonder, Ezra Klein, at Pandagon is exactly right. Bush is promising a "major policy address" in New Jersey today. The cable slaves will cover it, lapping up its potential.

And it will be another mindless campaign stump speech -- followed by the cable nets not admitting they'd been taken in again (or not wanting to). How terribly sad, except it makes me really, really, angry:

On Monday, Bush is heading to NJ (Southern NJ, otherwise known as the Philadelphia media market for those unwilling to fall for the "NJ is a swing state!" fake out) to give a "major" address on terrorism. In fact, it's going to be such a critical speech that he took the day off from campaigning to prepare for it. Now, setting aside Bush's history of hyping "major" events before delivering underwhelming versions of his stump speech, Bush has had 4 years and three nationally televised debates to speak his piece on terrorism: what more can he possibly say about it?

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No matter how you look at it, this address is a sign of weakness for the Bush team. If they're so desperate for a change in the news cycles that they're playing the terrorism card, the internal polling just isn't looking good enough. And major addresses like this run a high risk of backfiring. The hype needed for the press corps. to attach the "major" qualifier creates serious expectations for the speech. If he steps up to the plate and proposes nothing new, an irritated media will spin the President's lack of new ideas on the subject and talk about the lost debates that forced the Garden State bait-and-switch. If he proposes a significant shift, it implicitly admits that he wasn't doing a good enough job for the first four years. It's a lose-lose, at least if the media does it's job right (yeah, yeah, big if).

The White House and the Bush/Cheney Election Team (aka "CREEP II") have done nothing but abuse and play the press for suckers for four years. But they just keep playing them.