Bush mangled his press conference this evening, and I found it painful to watch. Some moments were hilarious like the one below. Let's roll the tape:

Um, that wasn't an answer. At all. Sometimes Bush would respond with simply poorly chosen words, such as when he responded to a question of creating a domestic intel agency by saying, "Well, you're talking about one aspect of possible -- I think you're referring to what they call the MI5." I assume, should we create our own version of MI5, that we wouldn't call it that. And Bush's curious phrasing makes me wonder if he even knows that MI5 is the British domestic intelligence agency.

Sometimes, Bush's non-sequiturs almost seemed freudian, such as when he responded to a question about feeling personally responsible for September 11th with this answer, "I think the hearings will show that the Patriot Act is an important change in the law that will allow the FBI and the CIA to better share information together...We were kind of stovepiped, I guess is a way to describe it. There was, you know, kind of departments that at times didn't communicate -- because of law, in the FBI's case." We were kind of stovepiped?? What? Clearly Bush doesn't understand what stovepiping is. It's like he's playing mad-libs on primetime television with a bunch of nouns and adjectives he's overheard Condi Rice and Dick Cheney saying. Bizarre.

Overall, I think the decision to have him speak was a bad one. Bush never looks good in this format, even if it is tightly scripted, as this one was.