April 14, 2004 - They call them Parrotheads. They go to every Jimmy Buffet concert that they can find. They don’t go to hear a new song. They want the old songs – the ones that they have memorized the words to. I’m sure that you know a Parrothead, there are so many out there. They don’t go to hear Jimmy sing. They go to sing along. They go to spend a rum-soaked hour or two swinging on a tire swing, having a cheeseburger just short of paradise, and being a pirate looking back at 40. They are the unpaid backup singers on the Live from Margaritaville albums. Jimmy makes a million off of them and never has to learn a new song.

Watching the Presidents campaign appearance press conference reminded me of nothing so much as a Jimmy Buffet concert. There was no new song. The words were familiar. We all know the lyrics by heart. There was Stay the Course and Finish the Job, and the ever popular Finding Mustard Gas at the Turkey Farm. Freedom, says the President, is the Almighty’s gift to all mankind and it is our obligation to help Him give it. It was all the same old songs sung in the same old way without a note out of place. The President’s performance was flawless until some smarty-pants reporter asked him to reflect upon the biggest mistake he had made after the September 11th attacks. He was speechless for a moment but them recovered telling the world that he wished the question had been submitted in writing so that he could have prepared an answer, All in all the Fourth Estate played its role well – that of unpaid backup singers on the Live from Crawford album.

The problem is that since the lyrics coming out of George’s mouth were first written things have changed. The first two weeks of April 2004 have been the deadliest since the decapitation attack was launched on March 19th 2003. More Americans have died – 86 soldiers in all not counting civilian contractors hired by Kellogg, Brown and Root, - in these two weeks than any other similar span since the Second Iraqi War began. With characteristic stubbornness the President is still singing from the same song-sheet. We are going to hand over sovereignty to the Iraqi people on June 30th. When asked to whom we were going to give that sovereignty he passed the buck to the UN – the body he labeled as “irrelevant” just a year ago – but whoever that the UN decided the entity to be the US was going to recognize as the legitimate representative of the Iraqi people.

So what is the effect of the President’s Prime Time performance? I suspect that it will be about the same as after a Jimmy Buffet concert. George’s Parrots will be singing the old songs all the way home – and off key.