Bush Bugged?

[UPDATE Sunday, October 10 - Please check the Comments on this post for another point of view]

Hmmm. Perhaps this explains what I saw in the first presidential debate.   This article speculates that President Bush was "having cues and lines fed to him through a hidden high-tech earpiece." 

On one of the cable news networks today, I saw a reporter press a White House spokesperson on this; after many attempts to evade, he finally said something like "The President just has a strong backbone."  This despite the efforts of the reporter to give him a way out by suggesting it was part of a bullet-proof vest.

Click on that picture, look at it carefully, and tell me if that looks organic to you? 

In These Times goes on to say:

A voice coming through a hidden hearing device also would explain several long silences occurring at odd points in the president’s answers and his odd expressions and eye movements. . .

Experts familiar with spyware suggest this bulge in the jacket could have been an “inductor” for receiving signals sent from someone offstage feeding the president answers through a hidden, wireless earpiece. . . .

And in reference to a connection I made in my post:

Americans ought not be surprised should it turn out their president is having lines fed to him. Ronald Reagan was provided cue cards for every occasion by his staff and sometimes his wife, even one reminding him to say “Good Afternoon” when meeting heads of state.

They also note:

. . . receiving answers during a presidential debate clearly violates established rules.

It is an intriguing article; go read it.

Comments

[feste]

The Secret Service would never allow the WH to reveal that the bump was part of a vest or protective device...one suspects it is GPS transmitter so the S. Service team knows exactly where the POTUS is, physically, at all times if they need to close the protective envelope or remove him. In a world where zealots will destroy an entire building to kill one man, they need to know exactly where the POTUS is, dead or alive.

Apart from taking a deep breath and applying a little common sense — as in if we could see it , so too could the Kerry campaign and they would be the first to howl — I can understand partisans making this charge had Bush performed well or aced Kerry, but it doesn't make sense in the face of his miserable performance that night.

The media raps Bush for having "30 minutes of material, in a 90 minute debate" then claims he was fed answers?

[SB]

This is an interesting suggestion, and the most plausible I've heard.

How do you explain the -- not just poor performance, but scattered, erratic, "spacey" performance -- at the first debate?

[feste]

I dunno...he was out visiting hurricane victims in the heat for most of the afternoon ...but he's in great shape and his team would have made sure he had some downtime prior to the debate.

I agree that he appeared very distracted...perhaps something was going on in the background...a planned op was underway...or a shoe was expected to drop.

Everyone forgets that the POTUS, whomever and wherever he is, has a lot of balls in the air that we never know exist and we are at war and under attack.

All Kerry has to do is memorize his crib sheets, get his hair and makeup done...Bush is running a country and a war.

[SB]

Well, we do of course see this through different lenses.

I was actually a bit reassured by the theory that wired 'prompting' threw him off balance. One of my lenses is political; but another is that of a clinical social worker -- and that lens saw signs of cognitive and emotional dysfunction.

In the second debate, the President seemed to function much better intellectually, but was still emotionally brittle.