WaPo:"President Struggles to Regain His Pre-Hurricane Swagger"

[npincus]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/23/AR2005092302182.html?referrer=email

"A president who roamed across the national and world stages with an unshakable self-assurance that comforted Republicans and confounded critics since 2001 suddenly finds himself struggling to reclaim his swagger. Bush's standing with the public -- and within the Republican Party -- has been battered by a failed Social Security campaign, violence in Iraq, and most recently Hurricane Katrina. His approval ratings, 42 percent in the most recent Washington Post-ABC poll, have never been lower.

A president who normally thrives on tough talk and self-assurance finds himself at what aides privately describe as a low point in office, one that is changing the psychic and political aura of the White House, as well as its distinctive political approach.

In small, sometimes subtle but unmistakable ways, the president and top aides sound less certain, more conciliatory and willing to do something they avoided in the first term: admit mistakes. After bulling through crisis after crisis with a "bring 'em on" brashness, a more solemn Bush now has twice taken responsibility for the much-criticized response to Hurricane Katrina.

Aides who never betrayed self-doubt now talk in private of failures selling the American people on the Iraq war, the president's Social Security plan and his response to Hurricane Katrina. The president who once told the United Nations it would drift into irrelevancy if it did not back the invasion of Iraq last week praised the world body and said the world works better "when we act together." A White House team that operated on its terms since 2000 is reaching to outside experts for answers like never before."


I'll drink to that!

[Bob3]

1. oh shut up please

and piss on the macho swagger what the hell good did it do the republic? None. I'm happy it's gone - the emperor is naked and people are just going to have to get used to the idea that an incompetent uncaring self absorbed narcissistic twit with a taste for killing by proxy is president - that's the reality - not the fucking swagger.

end of rant.

[soothsayer]

2. Bwa ha ha ha! So the a-hole DOES listen to polls, eh? Guess

that's why he reportedly spends over a million dollars a year doing so.

[ClintonTyree]

3. Poor bush, his image is tarnished........

to hell with people dying all over the world because of his bone-headed agenda, it's his IMAGE that's most important and they'll work tirelessly to insure his numbers go back up.
There's not a compassionate bone among the lot of them.

[hardrainfallin]

4. staggering, simply staggering! n/t

[Ripley]

5. Excellent word! Swagger, according to Merriam-Webster...

Main Entry: 1swag·ger
Pronunciation: 'swa-g&r
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): swag·gered; swag·ger·ing /-g(&-)ri/
Etymology: probably from 1swag + -er (as in chatter)
intransitive senses
1 : to conduct oneself in an arrogant or superciliously pompous manner; especially : to walk with an air of overbearing self-confidence
2 : BOAST, BRAG
transitive senses : to force by argument or threat : BULLY

:rofl:

[Stinky The Clown]

6. Him ....... its always about him. I have a hymm for him

Hiiiiiiim .... Hiiiiiiim ...... Fuck Hiiiiiiim ......

[npincus]

7. tee hee!

[tanyev]

8. Uh...OK.

He projects this in nonverbal ways as well, the arms-swinging gait of his walk, the glint in his glare, the college boy grin that flashes even in sober moments.

[gratuitous]

9. Oh the Post is so modest

Bush's swagger didn't just comfort Republicans, it totally hypnotized large segments of the Fourth Estate, including the Post. They couldn't get enough of Commander Bunnypants strutting around on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, his steely resolve in going to war when there was no casus belli, his total control over a bunch of millionaires in Congress in passing fat tax cuts for themselves. Oh, it wasn't just the Republicans by any means who were comforted by Bush's manly swagger.

If the media finally get fed up with this spoiied frat boy, you can bet that they'll have collective amnesia about their part in puffing him for six years and more.