NEW YORK, 3 September 2004 — What were they thinking? More precisely, what was their speechwriter thinking?
On Tuesday night the Bush twins made their debut on prime time TV — introducing their mother to the Republican National Convention.
Much buzz had been put out prior to their TV debut as to how “hot” the twins were (a term I find inappropriate and objectionable).
Their appearance generated more buzz than even Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose acting abilities make it easy to grab an audience’s attention.
But now, after the twins appearance, the “buzz” is over a quip Jenna said about her much loved grandmother, Barbara Bush. Deadpanning to the cameras, Jenna — who recently made news by sticking her tongue out at the press while lounging in a limousine — said the former first lady, her grandmother, “thinks the TV show ‘Sex in the City’ is something married people do, but never talk about.”
Not only did Jenna and Barbara, 22, suggest their grandmother was out of step with pop culture — they joked this was “payback time” to their parents, saying their parents’ pet name to each other was “Bushie.”
An odd comment. Odder still is that the author of the speech is not only employed by the Bush administration, but also a trusted adviser who is also working on tonight’s acceptance speech by the president — Karen Hughes. She said she wrote their speech with “some input” from Jenna and Barbara, said a spokeswoman for the twins.
“Karen has known the girls for so long she was able to capture their personality,” she said. “What we’ve heard is that people thought it was cute and funny.” Oh really? If that’s the case, they must have been talking to Republican sycophants.
Their speech received savage reviews from conservatives like Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard and Peter Robinson, the author of the Ronald Reagan’s famous speech at the Berlin Wall.
“How bad were the twins? Way bad,” Robinson wrote in National Review Online. “So bad that I honestly found myself yearning for the Kerry daughters and their tale of Licorice the hamster.”
And a Democratic speechwriter who wrote humorous speeches for President Clinton, told reporters: “I was part of the collective cringe. They were more Paris Hilton than Chelsea Clinton. The only way the speech could have been more lame was if they had been triplets.”
