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Bush v. futbol

June 22, 2006 1:35 PM

White House producer Karen Travers blogs from Hungary while traveling with the President:

One good thing about working in a White House press filing center, besides the endless supply of Diet Coke, is you can always find a television monitor.

We have been watching numerous video feeds coming in from the President’s events in Budapest today but as the clock got closer to 4pm local time, some in the American press corps started to get antsy for World Cup soccer.

You would think with all the technology the television networks travel with on foreign trips, we would not have a problem watching the U.S.-Ghana soccer game. But we got stuck with the Czech Republic-Italy game, probably due to our location in Eastern Europe. (At left, an overhead kick from today's U.S.-Ghana game.)

Bring on Plan B – and a big thank you to our friends at espn.com. I took the responsibility to monitor the game on that web site’s GameCast, which provided real time play and scoring updates.

When the President began his remarks on a hill above the Danube River, I had to juggle logging the speech and checking the espn.com ticker. The U.S. scored to tie the game at 1-1 and the President was about halfway through his speech on freedom and democracy.

I forgot where I was for a second and yelled, “We scored!”

The speech itself had no major headlines, but it did give the President an opportunity to highlight the Hungarians’ challenging path to democracy over the last half century and compare that to Iraq today. (At right, the President above the Danube in Budapest today.)

President Bush appealed to the Hungarians' sense of their country's history to urge patience in Iraq.

“Iraq's young democracy still faces determined enemies, people who will use violence and brutality to stop the march of freedom,” Bush said. “Defeating these enemies will require sacrifice and continued patience, the kind of patience the good people of Hungary displayed after 1956.”

“We will help them rebuild a country destroyed by a tyrant. We will help the Iraqis defeat the enemies of freedom.”

The President said the Hungarian people know the promise of freedom because many lived through fascism, communism or both, but now live in a free country.

“The lesson of the Hungarian experience is clear: Liberty can be delayed but it cannot be denied,” he said.

June 22, 2006 | Permalink | User Comments (0)

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