What Bush's Body Language Means

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It was revealing that when Bush eulogized former Texas Governor Ann Richards last week, he saluted not just the ability of his home state's legendary political characters to "talk Texan" but also their physical presence--"people larger than life, people that could fill the stage." The President has been on just about every imaginable stage lately. He went to Capitol Hill; gave a prime-time address; held the Rose Garden news conference; invited an anchorman into his limo, an editorialist onto Air Force One and a columnist into the Oval; held an off-the-record session for conservative radio hosts; and sat down chummily with a clutch of conservative opinion writers who had favored the war in Iraq but now think more troops are needed. That was all in nine days. He's so determined to be everywhere that he even did a White House interview with CBS's Katie Couric, despite his rough history with the network and the view among many Republican operatives that she's too liberal. It was a reserved, wintry performance. When they were about to take a break and Couric joked that he had a country to run, he offered, "I've got more than one thing to do on a regular basis, on a daily basis." But this time he did not jab his finger.