Presidential Body Language

Egad. This is the most shaken that President Bush has seemed in a presidential address since the "deer in the headlights" speech given on the night of September 11. The other presidential moment that this recalls for me is from the Bush/Clinton town hall debate in the 1992 campaign. This was the debate (if memory serves) where Clinton famously scored points by knowing the price of a gallon of milk, or a loaf of bread - something like that. President Bush Senior seemed uncomfortable the entire night (he apparently hadn't purchased milk on his own recently), and, at one telling moment, the camera caught him taking a quick glance at his watch. It was my young, naive view that this glance foretold his loss of the election. It's too early to say whether Bush Junior's performance at tonight's press conference foretells his future loss, but it was quite shaky.