RUSH: I think, as people assess this last night, the human aspect of this sometimes gets overlooked — certainly by the Drive-By Media. In many ways, President Bush was magnificent last night and some people might think that, given circumstances, that it could have been one of his finest hours. We don’t think about these things much. Well, I shouldn’t say that. I’m sure some of you do. But very few of us can understand what daily life for George W. Bush is like and all about. We all are seeking happiness, and we’re all pursuing it. We all want contentment. We all want to be liked; we all have many of these normal human emotions. None of us ever pull that off, of course, because it’s impossible. But here is a man whose life is lived in public. Every president’s life is, and he’s no different than any other president here in this sense, other than the ways I’m going to mention here in just a second. But vilified countless times a day, ask yourself how you’d hold up under it. I know you could say, and you’d be right: “But, look, Rush, I’m not seeking that and he is. He wanted to be president. He wanted the power, and you know that he knows the rules that it comes with.” Yeah, but still, they’re all human beings.
I’m leading up to something with this. People are still human beings in the end, and I don’t care who you are. I don’t care how much power you’ve got (unless you’re a dictator), you do not, as a human being, want to go through life being hated and despised and having things misstated about you and your character constantly maligned and this sort of thing. You may sign up for the power of being president because you want to change the country for good, you believe in the things you believe in; you think the country can’t do without you. That kind of ego is necessary for somebody to put up with all this, but still, it can’t be easy, and most of us would crack under it. Most of us would say, “I don’t want to deal with this,” and we’d slink back into a normal existence where nobody cares what we do or comments, certainly not publicly, and so forth and so on. In that circumstance, you have the president showing up last night in what was a lion’s den. There were hopes and dreams and expectations that he would crumble as a human being last night.
Make no mistake about it, my friends: the Drive-By Media was hoping, and they still hope, that they can crack this man’s spirit and his emotions and his resolve and his confidence, and they hope to make that happen publicly — and they were hoping that last night Bush would finally realize just how ostracized and isolated he is and admit that he’s made all kinds of mistakes and beg people’s forgiveness and so forth, and he did just the opposite. He went into a room that is now controlled and dominated by Democrats. He went into that room during a crucial moment in the war on terror — not just “the war in Iraq,” a crucial moment in the war on terror. He went into that room last night, knowing that the left and the Democrats are emboldened beyond even their normal arrogance and condescension. He went into that room knowing that there’s a bunch of wobbly kneed, linguini-spined Republicans that are willing to sell him out within five minutes of his departure last night. He went into that room with a dozen-odd sharks circling the room, circling in the waters for his job in 2008.