Against my better judgement, I watched a few minutes of the emperor’s press conference last night, and was taken aback by his odd tone of voice and speech patterns, notably quieter and slower than normal. Had Rove & Co. coached him to use a gentle presentation — to soften up the obstinate and maniacal message — or could it be something else? At least a couple other observers entertained the same suspicion that I did:
Neal Pollack: “George Bush said, seemingly on Quaaludes, that he didn’t give a hoot about the the United Nations.”
And the Washington Post’s TV critic Tom Shales:
Have ever a people been led more listlessly into war? It’s tempting to speculate how history would have changed if Winston Churchill or FDR had been as lethargic as Bush about rallying their nations in an hour of crisis. There were times when it appeared his train of thought had jumped the tracks.
Occasionally he would stare blankly into space during lengthy pauses between statements — pauses that once or twice threatened to be endless. There were times when it seemed every sentence Bush spoke was of the same duration and delivered in the same dour monotone, giving his comments a numbing, soporific aura. Watching him was like counting sheep.
Network commentators by and large tippy-toed around the subject of Bush’s curiously subdued performance. But at least Terry Moran of ABC News dared to say that the White House press corps had definitely seen Bush “sharper” than he was last night. Tactfully and gingerly, Moran said Bush seemed to be “trying to keep his mannerisms as cool as possible” as he fielded questions and spoke of ultimatums. The lethargy was contagious; correspondents were almost as logy as Bush was.
… The contrast between the foggy Bush of last night and the gung-ho Bush who delivered a persuasive State of the Union message to Congress not so long ago was considerable. Maybe Bush thought he was, indeed, coming across as cool and temperate instead of bored and enervated, and this was simply a rhetorical miscalculation. On the other hand, it hardly seems out of order to speculate that, given the particularly heavy burden of being president in this new age of terrorism — a time in which America has, as Bush said, become a “battlefield” — the president may have been ever so slightly medicated.
He would hardly be the first president ever to take a pill.