ironporer

Must be-Kerry seems intent on it too:

"...but to strengthen American forces that are now overstretched, overextended, and under pressure, we will double our special forces to conduct terrorist operations...." (John Kerry)

cuckoofrommars

Bush can't speak very well - we knew that already. But I think people tend to forget that Bush is actually told to say somethings incorrectly. Take the word nuclear. Bush doesn't say it properly – so people think of Homer Simpson saying "nucular." But then Clinton only said it right half of the time, and that depended on whether he was talking weapons or about families. Jimmy Carter pronounced it like “newkeeuh� which is even weirder. Nuclear should be easy to say – like likelier. Nobody says likular. People who care about this type of thing call it a folk etymology where an unfamiliar word is treated as if it had the same suffix as words like molecular. But "nucular" is pronounced that way by lots of very bright people – politicians, scientists, even weapons guys - all of whom know better. So it’s a choice, not an inadvertent mistake. They deliberately pronounce it in a folksy way. Or “we have the finger on the button and we’ll pronounce it how we damn well like.� But Bush knows better – his father had no trouble at all saying it. So he’s playing the faux-bubba thing – George Stephanopolus says he’d tell Clinton to do it all the time cuz it sounds folksy. Apparently it scores well on testing.

Reason I say this? Well - everyone remembers the comment by Bush that "people keep misunderestimatimg me." Thing is Bush said that same exact line at every campaign stop he went to for 6 months - it's deliberate. Yes he sounds like a twat, but for some reason huge swathes of people like it. I presume it's the same people who say "Eye-Rack" like the way some say "Eye-talian." Makes me think "we can go it alone phonetically too pal."

What gets me is when he says something that is actually dumb. Like when he originally called the invasion of Afghanistan a crusade. I mean that has the root word for "cross" in it for God's sake! In Arabic it translates to something like "al-hamalat as-salibiyya," or "campaign of the cross." Tho in fact a better translation would be the word "jihad" which doesn't sound so great from an Arabs point of view does it?

g1ant

Pull the other one...

snorkmaiden

No, I'm starting to think cuckoo has a point. We had the DNC last week and then the "terror alert" allegedly to take focus from Kerry and put it back on Bush.

This certainly does that. It's everywhere, and while he may not do all of them on purpose I'd be prepared to believe he does some of them intentionally.

I watched Clinton doing an interview about his book and he said he thought Bush wasn't as dumb as he pretended to be - or words to that effect as I don't have the transcript in front of me

The American politicians have their own spin doctors and speech writers just like the UK politicians do, and I'll bet a lot of the phrases he uses are sent to focus groups. Some grannies in deepest darkest somewhere or other probably think Bushisms are cute and endearing

cuckoofrommars

Bingo - focus groups decide everything. If there was one thing that Clinton did with Dick Morris is prove that as long as you run a quick poll first you can ensure you wont do anything silly. Morris spent every hour of the day testing words, phrases, comments, ideas in 300 people polls and then instructed Bill Clinton to just go with whatever the majority wanted. Genius. And now Clinton will go down in history as the man who poled the electorate the best...ahem.

Of course Bush is told what to do and say - every politican has a team who's job it is to do this. And yes he isn't as dumb as he looks. It's as if everyone has forgotten the last months of 2000 when the dull-as-poo George W Bush surprized everyone by making Al Gore look very ordinary and thick during the debates. In fact this time around there are whispers amongst Republicans about Bush pulling a "rope-a-dope" again and suddenly not appearing as thick and silly as normal. Combine that with the Karl Rove political machine and you've got yourselves a very able candidate.

nxylas

Then how do you explain John "the Green Belt is a Labour achievement and we intend to build on it" Prescott?