Bush Speech Flops

Even the applause was fake. Via Daily Kos::

ABC's Terry Moran just reported that the only time Bush got applause was in the middle of his speech when a White House advance team member started clapping all on their own in order to cajole the soldiers into clapping, which they dutifully did.

And now this:

US President George W. Bush's address to the nation, urging Americans to stand firm in Iraq, drew the smallest TV audience of his tenure, Nielsen Media Research reported.

Mr Bush's speech yesterday at the Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina averaged 23 million viewers combined on the four main US broadcast networks and three leading cable news channels networks that carried the speech, Nielsen said.

Compare that to his 82 million viewers when he addressed a joint session of Congress nine days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America. Or his 48.4 million viewers for the aircraft carrier "Mission Accomplished" speech. His previous low was 32.7 million for the April 2005 speech on Social Security.

America is switching off. As Mike Whitney says:

The Bush prime-time fiasco was the biggest presidential pratfall in the history of the office.