Bush: Like Watching Traffic

The WH visual analysis of the week goes to Nahum Barnea at ynet. 

Barnea deconstructs 43’s “major” recommitment-to-the-Middle East speech on Monday — one that nobody saw, heard, cared about or believed.  My only complaint?  No pictures.

I couldn’t document the sign-off scene that Barnea describes, of Bush standing at the window in Cross Hall, but the shot leading the NYT story was pretty good — showcasing a miniature and thoroughly-isolated Bush as if on display in a museum.  The emphasis on the floor seemed to highlight the speech as a crass gesture motivated by some vain hope to salvage Bush’s historical reflection.

What I liked even more, however, was the White House video, with more hints of breakdown.  In the clip I captured, thankfully without sound, you first see a technician memorializing himself in this Bush hail mary.  Even better, however, is the view of the start-stop-and start-again Washington traffic out of the window.  Besides providing something more interesting to focus on, the visual give-away (to me, at least) was: more business as usual.

(screen grab: whitehouse.gov)