It's one of the most embarrassing moments from Bush's presidency. At a press conference in 2004, he was asked to name his biggest mistake since 9/11. For President Clueless, this was a stumper.
"I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it..." Bush said, hemming and hawing. "I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn't yet."
He went on to name some things he didn't consider mistakes, then realized that he was drifting. "I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't... you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one," he said, leaving the question unanswered. It's ironic that standing in front of the cameras trying to figure out the least embarrassing answer was a mistake in itself. Politicians field these questions all the time -- the trick isn't to not answer, but to deliver a non-answer. There's a difference.
"No one scores 100% in this office and I'm sure you'd be able to find many of my critics who can answer that question better than I," a smarter Bush might've said. "But we need to look forward, not backward. Americans aren't interested in navel gazing, they're interested in solutions. Next question please..." Instead, Bush spent a long time trying to find a convincing, but unembarrassing answer -- there wasn't one...
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