This year we really had something to feel thankful for...

Charlene and I were both thrilled with the President's trip to Iraq. And obviously our soldiers were thrilled. And I have little doubt ordinary Americans (and freedom loving people all over the globe) are thrilled. Our mince pies tasted sweeter than ever before...

Others, of course, are NOT thrilled. My disgust for those sourpusses is mingled most pleasingly with the thought of how their jaws must have dropped. How they must have choked and gagged and sputtered their Thanksgiving wines up their noses as the news reached them. If only I could have watched! "Oh bliss, for former woes a thousand-fold repaid."

Although the White House lied to much of the press to conceal President Bush's Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad, many journalists and analysts yesterday were willing to give the administration a pass....[link]

Can you believe it. They're willing to give him a PASS! How rich. The lofty panjandrums will, digging deep into their not-infinite barrel of tolerance, give the man a PASS.

Oh George Bush, how lucky you are. The press gods will FORGIVE you! Some of them. Some fear it will "set a bad precedent." Others are gravely concerned because Bush Lied! He's flying into a battle zone, whose danger the press has been cherishing and exaggerating for months, and they are bothered because he told lies in order to keep it a secret!

They hate the President for doing going to Iraq, because these gestures matter. Words matter. I just read a good book about Ronald Reagan, (I'll blog it soon) and in it was Nathan Scharansky telling how bits of Reagan's speeches were circulated on tiny scraps of paper among the prisoners in the Socialist Gulag, even as sophisticates here and in Europe were heaping derision on them. And I also read how Henry Kissinger visited with leaders in the former Soviet Union, just after the fall, and asked them what had triggered the collapse. And most of them said SDI!

And the thing is, the experts didn't, couldn't see what was happening. The world was being changed, and they couldn't see it. Whereas poor dumb clucks who actually listened to the President could and did.

And it's the same now. Just read the speech. That's the reality; the NYT is the dream.

Posted by John Weidner at November 28, 2003 9:37 AM