Sunday, February 08, 2004
President George W. Bush The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
You did it! You went toe-to-toe with Tim Russert for a whole hour (minus commercials) and you didn’t mess up very much. Congratulations!
I sure learned a lot from your interview. One thing I learned is: The world is a dangerous place! In the very first segment, you said the word “danger” or “dangerous” 17 times! You said “terror(ist)(s)” 20 times. You said “threat(en)” 13 times and you said “Saddam (Hussein)” 18 times. You called Saddam a madman 4 times.
This is useful information--next time you have to do an interview, you won’t have to talk so much to keep the interviewer from asking questions. Just keep saying, “Dangerous threat Saddam terror madman Saddam terrorist threat...” and pretty soon the hour will be up!
Another interesting thing--you only said Bin Laden’s name once. I guess that makes Saddam Hussein 18 times more dangerous than Bin Laden. If you catch Bin Laden in October, I bet you’ll be saying his name a lot!
My favorite part was when you said, “I make decisions here in the Oval Office on foreign matters with war on my mind.” It sounded like a song. Remember Bob Dylan’s song, “With God on Our Side”? You’d like that song--he sings about how war leaders all through history have always said they had God on their side. Just like you! Anyway, you could put the words to that melody. The chorus would go:
And I make my deci-sions, With war on my mind.
I think it was a low blow for Russert to bring up your going AWOL. I just think your going AWOL is old news, and people should stop talking about you going AWOL. What does your going AWOL have to do with being president and running a war? Anyway, I think Kerry talking about you going AWOL is going to backfire on him. He’s going to insult everybody who’s ever gone AWOL and he’ll lose the AWOL vote. Your best answer was when you said:
“I supported my government. I did. And would have gone, had my unit been called up, by the way.”
Just keep saying that--then everybody will know you could have been a war hero too--just like John Kerry. It’s just that nobody asked you to.
As Tim Russert would say: Let’s turn to the economy. When Russert said that Rush Limbaugh, the CATO Institute and the Heritage Foundation all called you the biggest spending president in history, you said, “Well, they’re wrong.” Good answer! Direct and to the point! When people accuse you of running up a 500 billion dollar deficit and underestimating your Medicare program by 35% and not including the 500 billion dollar war in the deficit and giving your rich friends a tax break and losing 2.2 million jobs and wanting to spend another 500 billion dollars to go to Mars, don’t argue with them. They’re just trying to bait you! Just keep saying, “They’re wrong.” Also say, “We’re makin’ progress.” That’ll shut ‘em up!
I felt sorry for you when Tim Russert asked you why people think you’re such a “divider.” You said, “Gosh, I don't know, because I'm working hard to unite the country. As a matter of fact, it's the hardest part of being the president.” Then you said, “I'll tell you, though, I'm not going to change, see? I'm not trying to accommodate -- I won't change my philosophy or my point of view.”
Go figure. Anyway, I think you were being a good uniter for a while. You had the right-wing Republicans united until the deficit ran into the trillions. But my point is, you had something to build on. If you could just recapture the magic you had with right-wing Republicans, maybe you could spread it around the country and around the world. All you have to do is to convince everybody to be right-wing Republican Evangelical Christians, and we’ll all be united!
Anyway, I just thought you’d like my feedback on your Big Interview. I thought you did great and I give you a 9 or 9 1/2 on a scale from 1-10. I’d give you a 10 except your American flag lapel pin is still crooked. You could get away with that stuff before, but this is an election year and those Democrats play rough!
Four more years! Especially if you catch Bin Laden in October!
Carl Estrada
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