If this story turns out to be true, then it's all over for George W. Bush. Salon reports that a fast-spreading blog item surrounding an image of President Bush in the first debate which "shows a large solid object between Bush's shoulder blades as he leans over the lectern and faces moderator Jim Lehrer." The picture above sure looks suspicious. Salon notes:
On several occasions, the president simply stopped speaking for an uncomfortably long time and stared ahead with an odd expression on his face. Was he listening to someone helping him with his response to a question? Even weirder was the president's strange outburst. In a peeved rejoinder to Kerry, he said, "As the politics change, his positions change. And that's not how a commander in chief acts. I, I, uh -- Let me finish -- The intelligence I looked at was the same intelligence my opponent looked at." It must be said that Bush pointed toward Lehrer as he declared "Let me finish." The green warning light was lit, signaling he had 30 seconds to, well, finish.
If true, it's catastrophic for the President. Chervokas has it right:
This is not a game of "gotcha" journalism. If the most powerful man in the world, a man who has built his campaign on his image as a strong leader, has to break rules and be fed lines from handlers off stage in order to conduct a debate it's clearly something the people need to know about.
The White House refused comment and thus far, mainstream media and the talking heads have not picked up on it. But sites like Kos and the Washington Dispatch others are jumping on it.
UPDATE: This site (amazing how quickly these things are put up) has some in-depth work and theory on whether Bush and other public figures use this technology and whether - outside of debate rules of course - it's ethical or not.
UPDATE II: Mark McKinnon, Media Director for the George W. Bush re-election campaign, answered the question, according to MediaChannel: "The answer is, The President has never been assisted by any audio signal." Guess that's that.
UPDATE III: The story hits newswires. Reuters plays it basically as "those crazy bloggers."
