President Bush was in Atlanta on Thursday speaking to the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. This was the 3rd of 4th in a series of speeches trumpeting the Administration’s accomplishments in the War on Terror. The day before the President revealed that some Al Qaeda operatives had been held in secret detention facilities overseas. His speech on Thursday didn’t contain much in the way of revelations, but there was some interesting content.

There was a lot less ceremony than I expected. I figured every political person who rated over county commissioner would get up and speak as part of the introduction. Instead the chairwoman of the GPPF spoke for 2 minutes, then Governor Sonny Perdue spoke for a minute to introduce the President.

The crowd was solidly Republican - well except for the local press in the back - so there was applause at all the right times. Bush seemed to be more on his game than usual, however he still seems way to uncomfortable speaking.

He reads the first half of a sentence, pauses to look at the next half, they says it. I think that is what is the most annoying part of listening to him. My theory is that he knows that whatever the President of the United States says is scrutinized all over the world and he wants to make sure he doesn’t screw up and announce Bartlett’s Secret Plan to Fight Inflation1.

My advice to the administration is let Bush be Bush and not to worry about random faux-paus. When Bush knew what he was going to say next, he said it with passion, something most of his policy speeches lack. The other problem is that the speech didn’t fit the audience. When you are speaking to people who have donated money to the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, its safe to assume that the people in the room have an understanding of basic public policy. Several times I felt like saying “Tell us something we don’t know Mr. President”.

The content of his speech was a re-hash of the 9/11 report, told as a bedtime story. He outlined where the US Government failed and what has been done since 9/11 to fix it. He neglected to mention the cases where the cure was worse than the disease, but that is hardly unexpected.

The most interesting thing in the content of the speech was his backing off of the implied powers granted in Article II. I guess some gave Harriet a copy of the Youngstown Decision. Bush called upon Congress to authorize both military tribunals and the NSA wiretapping program.

I won’t comment about the security procedures in public, but I will say that it was quite different from what I expected. Catch me in person sometime if you want the details.

1Season 1 of The West Wing, Josh joking with the press corps announces a secret plan to flight inflation and the press believes him. Hilarity ensues.