Bush's Brain

A couple more (non-policy) remarks about Bush's performance in the debate.

the IHT has this odd finding:

Joseph Tecce, a psychology professor at Boston College, who studies nonverbal communication, said the starkest difference between the two men came during their closing statements. For much of the debate, each of them blinked between 30 and 50 times a minute, Tecce said, which demonstrates a normal level of stress.

Kerry maintained that level during his closing statement, blinking 49 times a minute while Bush blinked 111 times per minute.

I noticed that on Thursday. Just to make sure I looked over Bush's closing once again, and it's astounding how frequently he blinks. Freakish. Not sure what that means but it's odd.

Also, Bush's verbal skills really have declined over the years. As James Fallows noted, Bush used to be able to put together coherent sentences -- even for a whole debate (at least mostly) in his challenge to Ann Richards (I only heard a few exchanges but he sounded pretty normal in them). In various pre-debate media appearances, Fallows played clips from prior performances and Bush didn't strew his speech with loooo-oOOOo-ong pauses, syllables and phrases reiterated Touretically, near-stuttering, and a profusion of non-verbal sounds (grunts, "mmmmm"s, etc.)

What in the hell happend to Bush's brain in the past decade or so?. Whatever it is, I'm not reassured by the President's obvious decline.