I'm So Macho I Could Cry

We recall reading a column by Molly Ivins (we think) in the last couple of years that maintained that all of El Presidente's cowboy swagger is just an act, that he was and is just a momma's boy carrying a huge load of insecurity and guilt over being an under-achiever ... that all the macho posturing is a scaffold built by Karl Rove. (Don't ask me to supply a link to the Ivins archives. I'm not taking the time to look it up.)

We knew Ivins was right. His body language screams indecision and weakness -- outright fear of his surroundings. Consider Dana Milbank's description of his appearance yesterday a.m. on the "Today" show: "Does it worry you," NBC's Matt Lauer ask[ed] him at a construction-site interview in Louisiana, that prosecutors "seem to have such an interest in Mr. Rove?" "Bush blinks twice. He touches his tongue to his lips. He blinks twice more. He starts to answer, but he stops himself. 'I'm not going to talk about the case,' Bush finally says after a three-second pause that, in television time, feels like a commercial break."

Milbank goes on: "The president was a blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts. Bush has always been an active man, but standing with Lauer and the serene, steady first lady, he had the body language of a man wishing urgently to be elsewhere. The fidgeting clearly corresponded to the questioning. When Lauer asked if Bush, after a slow response to Katrina, was 'trying to get a second chance to make a good first impression,' Bush blinked 24 times in his answer. When asked why Gulf Coast residents would have to pay back funds but Iraqis would not, Bush blinked 23 times and hitched his trousers up by the belt. When the questioning turned to Miers, Bush blinked 37 times in a single answer -- along with a lick of the lips, three weight shifts and some serious foot jiggling. Laura Bush, by contrast, delivered only three blinks and stood still through her entire answer about encouraging volunteerism."

I'm beginning to wish I'd seen this for myself (and there's bound to be a QuickTime version of it up on the 'net somewhere. There is: see below). Milbank continues: "As Lauer went through his introduction, the presidential eyes zoomed left, then right, then left and right again, then center, down and up at the interviewer. The presidential fidgeting spiked when Lauer mentioned the Democratic accusation that Bush was performing a 'photo op.' Bush pushed out his lower front lip, then licked the right corner of his mouth. Lauer's query about whether conservatives 'are feeling let down by you' appeared to provoke furious jiggling of the right leg. Bush joked about his state of mind when Lauer asked Laura Bush about the strain on her husband. 'He can barely stand!' the president said, interrupting. 'He's about to drop on the spot.' But the first lady had a calming influence on the presidential wiggles. When Laura Bush spoke about her husband's 'broad shoulders,' the president put his arm around her -- and the swaying and shifting subsided."

Milbank points out that the Bush handlers have not been allowing the press close to him through recent crises. The "Today" show appearance was a rare exception, and even while that filming was going on, print reporters were kept at a distance. Milbank notes: "ABC News noted cheekily of its rival network's exclusive: "He [Bush] did allow himself to be shown hammering purposefully, with a jejune combination of cowboy swagger and yuppie self-consciousness."

A jejune combination of cowboy swagger and yuppie self-consciousness.

Karl Rove isn't maintaining the scaffolding.

(Crooks & Liars has several different video loops, but the QuickTime version I viewed is of such low resolution -- and truncated -- as to be useless. I didn't try all the others.)