Occasional misses in grammar and pronunciation - Understandable

Continual mistakes displayed in national/international coverages - Embarrassing.

Repeated mistakes that are so numerous, some people actually made books and calendars out of it - Priceless

There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s… all right, I’m done.

Using folksy language : understandable and smart in many situations and can be done quite easily without grammatical errors

Blatant grammatical errors : completely unacceptable for a president of the most powerful nation on earth.

Harvard and Yale graduate : Considering that it’s almost impossible to actually fail out of an Ivy League school (getting in is the hard part), finishing with C’s is the Ivy League equivalent of failing out.

Iran says it can’t have nuclear weapons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N.....the_treaty

@Richardson:
“Bush is just making sure they undermisestimate him.”

undermisestimate –> misunderestimate

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/ED.....isms.reut/

Spot on.

If you look at a hypothetical debate (popularity contest?)in those terms, of course you are correct. Ahmadinejad, Bin Laden, Hugo Chavez, and a few others win by default in much (probably most) of the Islamic or developing world, regardless of how well-organized, well-spoken, or charismatic Bush might be - unlikely as it may be - even were he to have to debate performance of his life. Which, as you pointed out, tells us a lot about what we’re up against in much of the world.

Personally I don’t understand why people can’t get it, when President Bush says nucular with a twinkle in his eye it seems to be obvious to me. All of his political rivals outside of Texas seem to want to play dumb and choose not to see the affectation though.

sonagi, I still think that in a hypothetical debate with Bush, Ahmadinejad would manage to screw himself by expressing his own moronic theories before the President would even have to respond. Should the stuff coming out of Ahmadinejad’s mouth even merit a response.

No, because Ahmadinejad and Bush appeal to very different audiences. Ahmadinejad’s remarks about the Holocaust and homosexuals may not play well in the US, but they boost his standing amongst Iranians and Muslims elsewhere in the region. Non-Muslims in developing countries would likely give Ahmadinejad a more favorable hearing than Bush. Holocaust deniers are evil in the eyes of many Westerners but do not garner much condemnation amongst a number of leftist Westerners and non-Westerners in general.

Indeed, last summer I received a chain letter from an Israeli friend regarding the abolition of the Holocaust from the British national curriculum (turned out to be a hoax). One of her “friends,” a barrister no less, sent a Pawi-like reply to everyone rambling on about Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and accusing Jews of milking the Holocaust for political gain.

So you really believe these verbal gaffes and grammar mistakes stem from the fact that he is supposedly bilingual? Most of the hundreds of bilingual speakers I know - myself included - don’t seem to have this problem. Especially the ones with higher education. Unless they are extremely fluent or learned both languages simultaneously in childhood, grammar mistakes or other imperfections might be expected. In their second language! (First language transfer to the second language, not the opposite.) Were the President a newly arrived immigrant and second language speaker of English - or a young child recently entered into an immersion program - there might be something to your theory; however, these scenarios don’t apply to George Bush.

“And gets nervous during public speaking.” - wjk

I don’t think he gets that nervous at public speaking. (Lost sometimes, maybe, but nervous?) From a script, he isn’t too bad. Press conferences are a weaker point. He may be better at working a room than being at the podium, and he may not sound as academic as some politicians (which many people, as Bush is well aware, appreciate), but the act of actually getting up in front of an audience can’t be much of a struggle for him. I don’t happen to care for the guy, but you can’t grow up in that family, be in the oil business, run a baseball team, be governor of Texas, and serve two terms as President of the United States without having mastered public speaking anxiety.

“He’s a Yale graduate.” - wjk

This is true, but it doesn’t mean that he can speak with as much grammatical accuracy or eloquence (subjective, I know) as many others who did not go to Yale.

sonagi, I still think that in a hypothetical debate with Bush, Ahmadinejad would manage to screw himself by expressing his own moronic theories before the President would even have to respond. Should the stuff coming out of Ahmadinejad’s mouth even merit a response.