Bush Gets Networks to Give Him Millllions and Millllions in Free Advertising

Bush promised a major policy statement today, networks all cut away to see it, and word is that it was just the same stump speech he gives 3x a day (4 if you count him retelling it during those quiet, contemplative moments with Condi). They were had, and yet I didn't hear anything about that on the networks tonight. I don't usually catch large volumes of network news, but tonight, I hit most of them (I'm hiding from deadlines).

Matthew Yglesias:

What is this bullshit? The president went and gave his standard stump speech and relabeled it a major address and got all these TV stations to cover it. Is the press really going to stand for that? (don't answer).

This is how The Times presents it (with mention about retooling his stump speech to go on the attack against Kerry ( Bushius Pre-emptorumpus is a terrible thing):

delivered on the day when a new report raised questions about his rationale for going to war, Mr. Bush seemed to be trying to make up ground that polls show he lost during last week's debate. He accused Mr. Kerry of "proposing policies and doctrines that would weaken America and make the world more dangerous" and of pursuing a "strategy of retreat" in Iraq.

...Mr. Bush's new speech signaled that he would stand firm between now and Election Day over his handling of Iraq and appeared to be an effort to take attention away from the 918-page report released in Washington on Wednesday detailing how Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of unconventional weapons had been dismantled years before the invasion last year, and how the Iraqi dictator's ability to pose a serious military threat - a justification for war Mr. Bush still makes regularly - had eroded after 1991.

But the speech also gave the president a chance to break the cycle of news articles about his performance in the last debate and to accomplish in a controlled setting what many Republicans have said the president failed to do as forcefully as he needed: draw sharp, compelling differences between his position and record and those of Mr. Kerry. He tried to do so in many different areas, arguing that Mr. Kerry had earned the title of "the single most liberal member of the Senate" by "voting for higher taxes, more regulation, more junk lawsuits and more government control over your life."

But Mr. Bush was silent on the weapons report. And he made no mention of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's statement on Monday that he had seen no firm evidence of a link between Mr. Hussein and Al Qaeda, or of the statement by his former top official in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, that the United States had not put enough troops into Iraq to secure the country.