Even though she is clearly incapable of what her job entails, I feel bad for Dana Perino sometimes. Sometimes. Bush puts out a lot of garbage and her job is to sweep it into neat little piles after he speaks for the press. On any average day it is hard enough to be simultaneously clueless and White House Press Secretary, but on the day of the State of the Union (but after the speech in print form has been handed out) is just overwhelming. I'll pick out some items below, but definitely read through the transcript if you have time.
From The White House:
On Earmarks:
Q So on the earmarks, he said at the end of last year that he was directing OMB to look and see what they could do to reduce the earmarks that Congress had passed last year. You suggested the thing that he's doing tonight, or announcing tonight in the State of the Union, addresses future earmarks. What happened to the plan to tackle earmarks last year?
MS. PERINO: The President decided that he needed to give the Congress a very clear indication of what he was going to do. Last year he called on Congress to voluntarily cut the number of earmarks in half; they did not do that. The President will not go retrospectively back to the earmarks that were in the omnibus, but he will take this action for 2009 appropriations.
Remember, an executive order remains in place unless a future President decides to rescind it or change it. So we think this is a good, solid action, and it's a good way to do business, in terms of signaling exactly to Congress what you plan to do and then taking further action if they -- since they didn't voluntarily reduce the number of earmarks.
Q But what happens -- what was the plan, then, to deal with all the earmarks from last year?
MS. PERINO: As I said, I --
Q Are they still up in the air or --
Q Or are you just going to let them go?
MS. PERINO: We're not going to -- there's no further action on them.
Q Oh, so he's dropping that, what he said.
Q In other words, fiscal '08 appropriations (inaudible) and the application applies for the first time to fiscal '09 appropriations?
MS. PERINO: Peter.
Oh Peter, you know better than ask silly questions that make the President look like a complete hypocrite that he is. I won't bother with this utter silliness.
On the President's legacy:
Q You said it's the final State of the Union. Is it, in a way, an attempt to shape the legacy? And in what way, if it is?
MS. PERINO: No, I think it's -- I can understand why many people, especially those that cover the President in the press could see that the President would approach this as his legacy speech, but no, not at all; this is a very forward-looking speech. The President doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about that. Look, the President thinks his legacy will shake itself out when people look at the record, and history will tell.
Ha, history is already deciding on that.
On the state of the union now versus seven years ago:
Q Is the country better off --MS. PERINO: The what?
Q Is the country better off now than seven years ago?
MS. PERINO: Certainly seven years ago -- well, seven years ago, right before September 11th, I think that people would say that the country certainly felt better off. There's been -- once we were confronted with terrorists who would fly jumbo jets into buildings and kill thousands of our citizens in an instant, it created a sense of fear and nervousness about our security. And that's why the President decided to take on the terrorists head on and go on the offense.
And we have done that around the world. We have been successful so far in preventing another attack on our country. But it's not for their lack of trying. And that's another reason why the President -- tonight you'll hear him call on Congress to pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reauthorization. They have until Friday to do that, and the President sees no reason why they shouldn't be able to get that done.
So um, that would be no I'm assuming? Like I said before, I really do feel sorry for her, sometimes.
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