Okay, well, all I can say is that I am suprised by your opinion ... but I respect it.
You say he did poorly in the first thirty minutes...what do you think of his performance in the second thirty minutes?
Better, but not completely redeeming of the first 30. I think I mentioned this a couple of times.
BTW, I did not say the President answered each of Russert's "attacks" perfectly. I said I thought he more than "held his own."
I thought he acted like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar. Not sure I would agree that he held his own, seemed to stammer and be caught off guard a few times ... but, it is what it is. The voters will let themselves be heard ... and i'm sure there will be at least 20 polls this week that will attempt to tell us what most people truly thought. If i'm wrong, so be it. It happens to all of us. Maybe everyone else in the country thought he did brilliantly. If that is the case, it will be born out in the ballot box.
I think Bush is smart enough to realize that not every intellectual skirmish needs to be won.
You mean like learning how to pronounce "Nuclear" correctly? ;-)
This interview wasn't a high school debate in which the President had to win all the points. This was his chance to share his opinions and goals with the American people.
I think he fared very well on that score. And, it seems he is smart enough to know that getting his message across to his "fellow Americans" is the thing that really counts.
Okay. Duly noted. I was disappointed. For some reason I thought he agreed to the interview because he had some kind of smoking gun he was waiting to for the right time to drop. The best we got was "Mr. Kay said he had the capability to develop weapons eventually". Maybe it was a case of getting my hopes up too high.
Bush's pronunciation bugs the heck out of the other members of my family, who were born in the NY area.
I'm a little more tolerant of variations in speech. Maybe that's because I was "born and raised" in another section of the country.
Webster's seems to have accepted the pronunciation Bush uses, too. I guess some might consider it substandard.
Though disapproved of by many, pronunciations ending in \-ky&-l&r\ have been found in widespread use among educated speakers including scientists, lawyers, professors, congressmen, U.S. cabinet members, and at least one U.S. president and one vice president. While most common in the U.S., these pronunciations have also been heard from British and Canadian speakers.