CNN reporter Suzanne Malvaeux, questioning President Bush at his Press Conference, today:
Q Thank you, Mr. President. With all due respect, Nancy Pelosi has called you incompetent, a liar, the emperor with no clothes, and as recently as yesterday, dangerous.
How will you work with someone who has such little respect for your leadership and who is third in line to the presidency?
Q. Thank you. Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy. [Senate Minority Leader] Harry Reid [D-NV] was talking about soup lines. And [Senator] Hillary Clinton [D-NY] was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet in the same breath they say that Social Security is rock solid and there's no crisis there.
How are you going to work -- you've said you are going to reach out to these people -- how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?
Granted, the questions aren't precisely identical. Gannon wanted to know how the President could possibly work with Democratic leaders when they're so insane and deranged, while Malvaeux's point merely seemed to be that they're so hateful and vicious. But the one-sided reverence of each question (how can you possibly work with Democrats who are so beneath you?) -- not to mention the similarity they share in phrasing and timing (Gannon asked his questions following the 2004 election) -- is striking.
