Beating around the Bush

Saturday Night Live totally hit the nail on the head tonight with their opening skit. They parodied the second presidential debate, and because the debate itself was so bizarre, they used several real lines from the debate in their skit. One of my favorite lines was when Bush said that "there have been rumors on the Internets about reinstating the draft" (emphasis is mine, but the extra "s" is all Bush). The best part, however, was the way they parodied the last question of the debate. In case you missed the debate itself, Bush was asked to name three distinct times where he had made a mistake. Naturally, he completely dodged the question. Instead he rambled on about how he would invade Iraq all over again, about how he makes a lot of decisions every day (like when to hold meetings!), and about how he didn't want to hurt the feelings of some of his appointees by saying their appointments were a mistake (John Ashcroft? David Hager? Charles Pickering? Peter Kirsanow? Otto Reich? or others?). As for naming three mistakes — or even one for that matter — no dice. SNL capitalized on this brilliantly. But even more brilliant was the way they treated Kerry's rebuttal to the President's answer to the last question. To paraphrase SNL: Kerry: "What I should do is simply name three mistakes Bush has made — he failed to pursue Osama bin Laden, he lied in the State of the Union address, and he attacked Iraq even though they had nothing to do with 9/11. I should just come out and state these three mistakes and then sit down, knowing that I cleaned George Bush's clock by answering the question that he failed to answer. That's what I should do, but of course I won't. Instead, I'm going to continue to talk and talk and talk, because I don't know how to help myself." So true. So very painfully true.