"I DON'T WANT TO SOUND LIKE A BROKEN RECORD, BUT..."



"...if I said anything more it would only confirm the very serious charges levied by my critics."

Okay, I made up that second part. If you happened to miss Bush's performance on Meet the Press this morning, you will also miss in the transcripts to the President pro tem stumbled through the hour-long interview with some pauses so uncomfortably long it left many conspiracy theorists wondering whether Karl Rove was prompting him through a hidden ear piece.

Bush offered the same canned answers we've heard dozens of times from him and other administration officials over the past few years. No surprise there. What surprised me was how readily Bush trembled under the uncharacteristically restrained questioning by Tim Russert. While not a softball interview, it was by no means a hostile one. Yet Bush's growing unease through the course of the interview was strikingly apparent even though it was conducted on Bush's terms and on his own turf. Given the way the President's house of lies is beginning to show cracks, I guess it's a moral victory for the White House that Bush didn't ground into a double play.

Even the conservatives at NRO were unimpressed by the President pro tem's performance on MTP this morning, Cal Pundit reports.