I want to begin this blog with some humor.  And President Bush sure has made my job easy today.  Bush gave a speech at the Sydney Opera House as part of the Asia-Pacific Economic Forum.  The speech may be the defining Bushism producing performance of his career.

From AP via Yahoo:

He'd only reached the third sentence of Friday's speech to business leaders, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, when he committed his first gaffe.

"Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit," Bush said to Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

Oops. That would be APEC, the annual meeting of leaders from 21 Pacific Rim nations, not OPEC, the cartel of 12 major oil producers.


    But that was only the first malaproprism that Bush said.


Talking about Howard's visit to Iraq last year to thank his country's soldiers serving there, Bush called them "Austrian troops."


    I guess those Australian troops must do strenuous training in the Alps.  This inversion also reminds me of the episode of The Simpsons where they visit Australia and it is implied that Australia stole Austria's capitol building and inserted an "al" in the building's title.

Then, speech done, Bush confidently headed out — the wrong way.

He strode away from the lectern on a path that would have sent him over a steep drop. Howard and others redirected the president to center stage, where there were steps leading down to the floor of the theater.

    Good thing somebody stopped him before he fell off the ledge of the stage.  That wouldn't have been a pretty sight.

    I am certainly not a leftist who uses Bush's word screw-ups as evidence that he is incompetent or monumentally stupid.  He is, believe it or not, a smart person.  No one, not even Jimmy Carter, becomes President without being intelligent.  That said, giving speeches is not one of Bush's strong points and has been a major weakness of his presidency.