The president's speechwriters

Froomkin's White House Briefing this morning (and now his column, which basically forms a narrative based on news reports from the Post and other papers, is ostentatiously labeled "Opinion" on the washingtonpost.com homepage; oh, I'd forgotten, Froomkin's "bias" is well documented).

A White House Briefing reader points me toward this National Catholic Reporter editorial , in which an outsider actually attends a Bush speech, listens to words -- and marvels at how his speech was covered.

The editorialist writes: "One . . . comes away with the impression that the national media, for all the disparaging remarks tossed its way by this administration, is considerate to a fault. Comparing the sound bites and the quoted portions in news stories to what we heard and to the actual transcript posted on the White House Web site, it is clear that the president was the beneficiary of some very generous spirits. The press constructs a far more cogent argument on the president's behalf out of discrete passages than anyone could manufacture from the whole speech itself.

"It is difficult to imagine that a presidency so closely guarded and protective of image could come up with nothing better. The speech jerks, in a syntactical and grammatical mishmash, from topic to topic. It engages in flights of imagination to make its case without regard for fundamental corrections that have already occurred to the record or for the deep questions posed about central tenets of this administration's policies by Republicans and Democrats alike."

The speech: Bush's rambling address on Jan. 23 at Kansas State University. You can read about the mainstream press's coverage in my January 24 column .

The entire National Catholic Reporter editorial linked to above is worth a read.