If you watched last night’s The Daily Show you saw a clip of Bush at Kansas State University taking a question about education — today Derrick Jackson of the Boston Globe provides a description —

In the question-and-answer period, there was a moment when Bush was caught confused about his assets in another arena. Someone asked Bush, ”Recently, $12.7 billion was cut from education . . . How is that supposed to help our futures?”

There was applause from the crowd.

Bush stumbled. ”Education budget was cut? Say it again. What was cut?”

The person said, ”$12.7 billion was cut from education. And I was just wanting to know: How is that supposed to help our futures?”

Bush said, ”At the federal level?”

The person said, ”Yes.”

Bush said, ”I don’t think we’ve actually — for higher education?”

The person said, ”Student loans.”

Bush said, ”Student loans?”

The person said, ”Yes, student loans.”

Bush said, ”Actually I think what we did was reform the student loan program. We are not cutting money out of it. In other words, people aren’t going to be cut off the program. We’re just making sure . . . it functions better. In other words, we are not taking people off student loans. We are saving money in the student loan program because it’s inefficient.”

Bush continued, ”And secondly, . . . we’re actually expanding the number of Pell grants through our budget.”

Derrick Jackson provides the correct answer:

The questioner at Kansas State was correct. In December, the Senate passed a $12.7 billion cut in loan aid, which would force college students and their families to pay much higher interest rates on their loans. Pell grants would remain capped at $4,050 for the fourth straight year, further depressing a purchasing power which has declined, according to the American Council on Education, from covering 84 percent of the cost of a public four-year college in 1972 to 34 percent today.

Jackson points out that just two weeks earlier Bush gave an address at an elementary school in Maryland to observe the anniversary of No Child Left Behind and promote the importance of education.

There are many observations one could make about the exchange at KSU. For one, can you imagine any other president of recent memory being caught that flat-footed by a question? (And did no one on the Bushie team anticipate that university students might ask a question about Pell Grants?) Once again, we see that Bush isn’t really interested in governing. He’s interested in power, and the perks of office, but the governing thing just doesn’t get his attention.

Back from paternity leave (yeah!) Dan Froomkin also provides commentary on Bush’s appearance at KSU.

How can a president of the United States talk for almost two hours, unscripted, and be so fundamentally unrevealing? …

… Just by virtue of his speaking so long, the meandering talk at Kansas State University generated zillions of column inches this morning in which reporters dutifully recorded the one genuinely new development — his rechristening of “domestic spying” as “terrorist surveillance” — as well as his playful digs at his wife, his hemming and hawing when asked about that gay cowboy movie, and so on.

And simply by taking a baby step outside his protective bubble and fielding unscreened questions (most, but not all of them, softballs) from a starry-eyed, solidly red-state audience, he garnered buzz about being forthcoming.

But he wasn’t.

Ultimately Bush unplugged gave a performance of remarkably little substance. There was no new thinking on display. There were no real insights shared. Instead, we heard mostly restatements of policy, familiar phrases and even whole stories recycled from the 2004 campaign.

My favorite Bush line, as recorded by Froomkin: “If I had to give you a job description, it would be a decision-maker. I make a lot of decisions.”

Wow, that’s …. inane.

I don’t think this qualifies as shrill, but it’s damn close.

Incompetence is not one of the seven deadly sins, and it’s hardly the worst attribute that can be ascribed to George W. Bush. But it is this president’s defining attribute. Historians, looking back at the hash that his administration has made of his war in Iraq, his response to Hurricane Katrina and his Medicare drug plan, will have to grapple with how one president could so cosmically botch so many big things — particularly when most of them were the president’s own initiatives.

In numbing profusion, the newspapers are filled with litanies of screw-ups. Yesterday’s New York Times brought news of the first official assessment of our reconstruction efforts in Iraq, in which the government’s special inspector general depicted a policy beset, as Times reporter James Glanz put it, “by gross understaffing, a lack of technical expertise, bureaucratic infighting [and] secrecy.” At one point, rebuilding efforts were divided, bewilderingly and counterproductively, between the Army Corps of Engineers and, for projects involving water, the Navy. That’s when you’d think a president would make clear in no uncertain terms that bureaucratic turf battles would not be allowed to impede Iraq’s reconstruction. But then, the president had no guiding vision for how to rebuild Iraq — indeed, he went to war believing that such an undertaking really wouldn’t require much in the way of American treasure and American lives.

Meyerson then goes into detail on the boondoggle extraordinaire that is the President’s Medicare Prescription Drug program, and concludes:

This is, remember, the president’s signature domestic initiative, just as the Iraq war is his signature foreign initiative.

How could a president get these things so wrong? Incompetence may describe this presidency, but it doesn’t explain it. For that, historians may need to turn to the seven deadly sins: to greed, in understanding why Bush entrusted his new drug entitlement to a financial mainstay of modern Republicanism. To sloth, in understanding why Incurious George has repeatedly ignored the work of experts whose advice runs counter to his desires.

To achieve True Shrillness, IMO, Meyerson needs to look deeper into the explanation of why the Bush Administration is so incompetent. Greed and sloth are apparent, but just the tip of the iceberg. And he also needs to ask why it is the Republican Party and most of the news media continue to dance to his tune.

A recent American Research Group poll put Bush’s approval rating at 36 percent. This time last year, the same poll had Bush at a 51 percent approval. Clearly, the American people are turning against him. Why is it that “Democratic strategists” (I use the term loosely) are afraid to take him on?

Any answers to those questions lead to utter, mouth foaming, incoherent, howling-at-the-moon shrillness. Guaranteed.