How gaffes are, and aren't analysed

[pecunium]

George Bush just said the troops aren't Americans.

Now, I don't think he meant that, any more than Kerry meant they were stupid, but he said it more clearly than Kerry did.

He's giving a press conference and he said that the first audience (for statements about the war, from the Oval Office, and from Capitol Hill) was the American People, and the second audience was the troops, and their families.

I think I can say no one is going to treat him to the same sort of roasting that Kerry got, or to that Biden got, or that any Democrat gets, when such clumsy locutions get used.

That's probably because we have a liberal media that won't cut the Republicans, esp. the president, any slack.

Comments

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

I hope someone you-tubes it.

[karl-lembke.livejournal.com]

There is a transcript available here (http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16697835.htm). The statement in question is about 17% of the way down the page:

BUSH: Oh yeah. The only thing I can tell you is that, when I speak, I'm very conscious about the audiences that are listening to my words.

You know, the first audience, obviously, is the American people. My second audience would be the troops and their families. That's why I appreciate the question about the troops' morale. It gave me a chance to talk to the families and how proud we are of them.

I suppose one could assume Bush is thinking of the two different audiences as disjoint sets (that is, no one who is in one set – "Americans" is in the second set – "the troops and their families". It would be as much of a reach as the famous Groucho Marx line, "what the elephant was doing in my pajamas, I'll never know".

I don't see how anyone can twist the statement into a claim that Bush said the troops weren't Americans without displaying a single-digit IQ. Kerry's "botched joke", on the other hand, is, at best, a lot more ambiguous.