You're right, I don't think she was prepared for any questions that challenged her in any way, and she seemed to be shocked that Chris Wallace (who's my f'ing hero for repeating "Incompetent and insulting" over and over again) would do anything other than kiss her ass.

Not being prepared for the bus question was bad enough, but did she really believe that no one on Fox would mention the WaPo piece pointing out her own "Pork Port" hijinks?

That's what pushed her over the edge.

I loved the fact that Vitter was in Houston visiting refugees and Landrieu was in Washington. john, you did a good job pointing that out in your "transcript."

Had Landrieu been in Baton Rouge when she was interviewed, I could have written off her confusion as fatigue. Instead, she was in her nice warm bed in Washington and had no excuse for her answers. She was caught off guard by being asked hard questions and she wasn't able to "spin" on her feet. Her staff is as much to blame. They should have prepped her better.

Jane, I mean, Ace, you ignorant ___!

How could you say the Republicans are prepared for the media onslaught? Time and after time, they know the MSM is coming after them and time after time they come across as bumbling, fumbling off message fools.

For example, how long did it take anyone in the Administration to point out that local and state officials are, by law, charged with being first on the scene and the FEMA, be design, comes in second? how long did it take them to point out that they did have the Navy and other military forces ready to go? How long did it take them to point out that, again by law, they had to wait for Blanco to make a request for federal troops (that, according to the video, she didn't make right off the bat)?

This isn't to say that the Admin did all right... but they didn't do as bad as they let themselves get portrayed as doing.

> This isn't to say that the Admin did all right... but they didn't do as bad as they let themselves get portrayed as doing.

My hope (though it may be in vain) is that the administration deliberately takes punches for the sake of letting people judge for themselves. How many episodes of, say, Phil Donahue or Jerry Springer did it take before you realized the game was rigged in favor of the bad guys?

I suspect Bush is counting on several factors, one of which is that a "critical mass" of people will be unable to avoid concluding that the media is deliberately omitting relevant questions, and framing its chosen questions in the most theatrical possible way, and those people will draw further conclusions from that.

Other factors will be longer-term consequences of his decisions: will democracy work in Iraq? Will the hijinks of Louisiana/NO authorities come to light? I'm not a "Bush can do no wrong" kind of guy -- among other things, at this point I have serious doubts about whether the "smaller government" shoe is going to drop while he's in office -- but I do take solace now and then from this article.

I think that you ar perfectly correct. She was not at all prepered for the questionaire. Afterall every one is going through such an agony that it is very much possible for the people to ignore everything else and concentrate to survive.