Reply #38: I'll never get over it. I got to see him once during his second term.

[hunter]

He was an old man who hadn't a clue. He was like some old guy you'd meet wandering aimlessly around a nursing home. All he had left was his handlers and his acting, and it wasn't nearly enough.

But the teevee news and the local newspaper covered the visit as if it was real. They faithfully reported on the event as it had been scripted, not as it was. The papers said nothing of the hideous and overwhelming emptiness of the man, and the television clips were tightly edited not to show it.

I've seen jet lag, I've seen exhaustion, but this was "I don't know where the hell I am, what the hell I am doing here, and who the hell are these people?"

Hollywood camera reflex smile.

I might have felt sorry for him if he'd ever been a good man, a brave man, or an honorable man, but he wasn't. He was a shallow and venal man fading away.