Not Ready For Prime Time President

In a few hours the President will deliver only the fourth primetime news conference of his two terms. He's given so few in large part because he's so indisputably bad at them (in addition, this Administration feels uniquely unaccountable to the American people, but that's another story). That's why I agree with Matthew Yglesias in being completely baffled by his motives. If Bush's idea is to sell Social Security piratization to the American people in primetime, considering the poll numbers get worse every time he opens his mouth, I'd say sell away. If the idea is to do some damage control on the low approval ratings and general assault on second-term priorities, I'd say that Bush actually speaking himself rather than through surrogates has never worked before, so why would it now?

Yglesias notes that the gang at the Corner of "Dear Leader" St. and "Our Fearless Infallible One" Blvd. think Bush is going to announce the capture of Osama. It's based on nothing but pure speculation.

Still, given that Bush is terrible at press conferences, scheduling a press conference to stop the bleeding seems like a peculiarly up-is-down thing to do. In other words, exactly what we have come to expect.