No Magic From the GOP Version of Penn and Teller

President Bush peeked out the window of the Oval Office yesterday morning at the crowd awaiting him in the Rose Garden, then went back to pacing. He had little reason to be enthusiastic about the task at hand.

It was the 20th time in recent days that he had tried to calm the markets, according to a CBS News tally. The previous 19 times, the market ignored him and continued its downward plunge. And this time would be no different.

A few minutes before he walked into the Rose Garden to say that "the American people can be confident in our economic future," the Dow Jones industrials were trading as high as 8530. A few minutes after his speech, the index was at 8224.

His chore of reassuring the markets thus completed, Bush turned to more pleasant tasks. He hopped on Air Force One and flew down to Florida for the first of the day's two fundraisers. He had some urgent work to do on the Republican Party's liquidity crisis.

The country desperately needs strong leadership now, but there's none to be found at the White House. The president is voicing the right sentiments, even if his words (Thursday's "we'll get through this deal") are characteristically clumsy. He's even affecting the right demeanor, between concern and confidence. But nobody seems to care.

Maybe it's his approval rating, now trading at pennies on the dollar. Maybe it's because his credibility was shot by his administration's previous claims about Saddam's nukes and yellowcake and cakewalks and being greeted as liberators and mission accomplished. Either way, White House press secretary Dana Perino had some difficulty explaining the president's role as she briefed reporters aboard Air Force One on the way to Florida.

"What's the communications strategy for the president on this crisis?" asked the Associated Press's Deb Riechmann. "I mean, we've heard from him almost every single day since the bailout was announced, yet every time he talks, the Dow goes down."

"That's not true, Deb," Perino replied, but she allowed that "the Dow has gone down every day for several days in a row."

"So you think it helps if he is talking about it all the time?"

"If he wasn't talking all the time, I can guarantee you the questions from the media would be to me, 'Why is the president not talking?' " the piqued Perino parried, adding that "it is important" that Americans "know that the leader of the free world has his full attention focused on helping solve this problem."

Except, of course, when he's raising $2 million for the GOP at the home of a Miami developer and on an island resort off South Carolina.

Even John McCain's presidential campaign manager was moved to remark on Bush's ineffectuality.