George W. Bush is mocked for his verbal slipups, but he was actually a master rhetorician

From the moment American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center, on Sept.11, 2001, to the first US airstrikes in Afghanistan, on Oct.

7 — the official start of the allied War on Terror — 26 days elapsed.This was the immediate aftermath of 9/11.Fresh off the “American Century,” having partied like it was 1999 and sailed through Y2K, the public now felt unprecedented vulnerability.Widely mocked for his struggles with the English language, President George W.

Bush rose to his moment.In a variety of communications settings — impromptu remarks and set speeches, solo and joint appearances — his oratory acknowledged our pain, lifted our spirits, mobilized us for war and reaffirmed our core values.In the annals of the modern presidency, this was a performance for which Bush has never received appropriate recognition, either from contemporaries or the historical record.“I didn’t want us,” the former president said in a recent appearance at the SMU center that bears his name in Dallas, Texas, “to lose our soul.”Most memorable was the Bullhorn Statement, delivered amid the rubble of Ground Zero on Sept.

14, arm around firefighter Bob Beckwith.“I can’t hear you,” a first responder shouted.“I can hear you,” Bush replied to applause.“The rest of the world hears you.And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”The crowd erupted: “USA! USA! USA!”Bush was given to malapropisms — most notably “misunderestimated,” uttered during an Arkansas swing in the 2000 campaign, though never “strategery,” a non-word conceived for an SNL sketch in which Will Ferrell portrayed him — and his connection with the electorate was, until then, tenuous: the first president inaugurated since 1889 without having won the popular vote.But the Bullhorn Moment showed Bush, a child of privilege, knew how to connect with ordinary people.

A day earlier, he had abruptly left an Oval Office gaggle aft...