"Iraq's a dangerous place …

"It is dangerous in Iraq …

"It's dangerous in Iraq …

"It is dangerous in Iraq …

"I can't put it any more plainly. Iraq's a dangerous place. That's leveling. It is a dangerous place …

"Iraq's a danger place and I can't put it any more bluntly than that. I know it's a dangerous place …

"Iraq is dangerous."

Thus waxed elegant within the span of a couple minutes the leader of the free world last Tuesday. The occasion was his first press conference in months, a pitiable 48-minute event skulked midday in the Rose Garden. The presidential performance again confirmed why no presidential aide would even think of putting the bossman in front of television cameras at any actually watched time of day. W.'s open-air ramblings were an embarrassment of simplistic repetition and all-too obvious mental straining, not to mention an unsightly temper, transparent deception, laughable contradictions, tawdry blame laying and frequent unintelligibility. He made one long for the flashy showmanship of Calvin Coolidge, the easy eloquence of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the simple honesty of Richard Nixon.

What's more, the president's wretched little show unfurled even under the best of sheltered circumstances; which is to say, the White House frowns on follow-up questions. That sort of thing simply isn't done in the Boy King's presence. So a compliant, obsequious press lobs soft balls his direction and W. lobs them back with an unaccountability that would curl the British hair of loyal oppositionists during Question Time.

Will the president cooperate with the independent commission investigating the administration's pre-9/11 screwups? Sure he will. Said W., "I want to be helpful" - a contention thrown a bit into question by his steadfast intransigence on the matter. It is, he continued, just that the requested documents (one of which reportedly warned of al Qaeda's plans to hijack airliners a full month before 9/11) would get "politicized."

Any reporter worth minimum wage would leap to point out to the president that, however inadvertently, he just confirmed the existence of damning evidence since, by his own admission, it is indeed "politicize-able." The reporter might also point out that in a free and open society these things do indeed get politicized. But sorry, next question. We must move along.

What great strides have we made in Iraq, ones worth hundreds of American lives? Let's see, beamed 43, one "very important achievement" has been the introduction of "a currency without the picture of the dictator." Understandably stunned, reporters of yesteryear might thereupon ask if that was some kind of sick joke. But sorry. Next question. Move along.

Who are the "suiciders" - as W. called them - causing so much death and destruction in Iraq? Ah, here's one to knock out of the park. "I would assume that they're either/or and probably both Ba'athists and foreign terrorists." Despite this revealed insight - especially the part of "either/or" - we might then want to know why billions spent on crack intelligence leaves the boss having to assume the cutthroats' identity. But no time for that, either/or.

Why is asking about troop levels a year from now a "trick question"? Why, just weeks after finally denying any connection between Saddam Hussein and September the 11th, do you, Mr. President, persist here again in connecting Saddam Hussein and September the 11th? How, Mr. President, can you say you're "focused on the security of the American people" when you spend as much time off the job as Al Capone in the 1930s?

In the absence of hard questions, one consolation is that George W. Bush wouldn't, or couldn't, answer them anyway. So perhaps it no longer matters that the press corps and White House have settled on a kind of "don't ask, don't tell" conspiracy. But one hopes no democracy-aspiring Iraqis were watching last week's presidential amateur hour - for the entire, sorry affair made the imitation of American-style governance of exceptionally dubious value.

© Copyright 2003 P. M. Carpenter

Mr. Carpenter's column is published weekly by History News Network and buzzflash.com.

Illustration by Joshua Brown.