I've been pondering Bush's press conference and his frequently-stated impatience with the media seeming to demand instant results. While he may have a point in some cases, his crabbing at them about it has bothered me for a while. First, it strikes me as somewhat petty. There's nothing he can really do about the news media, so it would be better to just deal with it. Second, at least in the case of Iraq, part of the problem is the administration's own doing. By consistently refusing to give us (and here I include not only the media, but Congress and the general public as well) any sort of real estimate of how long we're going to be there, they only invite questions. Here, what Bush perceives as the media nagging about instant results could in fact simply be people trying to find out what the timeline is.
It's like we're all going on a road trip, and want to know when we're going to get there. All we've been hearing is "Just a little while longer," when what we want to hear is a firm number of miles, or an estimated time of arrival. After we've heard "Just a little while longer" for the umpteenth time, we begin to wonder if the driver knows where he's going.
Posted by Jason at July 31, 2003 11:47 AM