The Dancing President

ABC’s Jon Garcia blogs:

There’s no better way in Washington to upstage a very serious message than by providing a very funny picture.

Witness today’s Bush event in the Rose Garden.

The event was carefully designed by the First Lady’s office & the WH staff to draw attention to the scourge of malaria and finding ways to fight it–one of Laura Bush’s projects.

The stage was adorned with colorful flags of 15 African nations, the audience assembled under the bright blue sky to hear how the US is spending $1.2 billion on saving lives. And then, as a finale, a dance and drum performance by the Kankouran West African Dance Company.

But then the unplanned, unexpected happened. Call it Bush’s "Yeltsin" moment.

Using of the premise of a regular old photo op, Bush and the First Lady Laura were lured up on stage by the dance troupe’s leader. After a quick picture, the drums started, the dancers–in their bright, colorful costumes–started to move, and President George W Bush was faced with a choice: dance … or, well, dance.

He grimaced a bit, as if to say "Oh, boy, here we go," and then he started to move. And, oh boy, did he move. He shook it to the left, he shook it to the right but he didn’t turn himself around.

Instead, when he’d exhausted his dance steps, he turned to the conga player next to him and beat that drum harder than Rocky hit that side of beef. (Though Rocky, I think, had a bit more rhythm.)

A few beats in, Bush went back to dancing and showed, like a great line dancer, he can follow a good lead. Mirroring the troupe leader, he raised his hands to the left, then to the right, then to the sky and then directly out toward the half-dozen TV cameras at the back of the audience.

On one level, you have to give POTUS credit. He played to his Rose Garden audience–and it seemed they loved him for it.

But on another level, he gave the world a picture many will remember without ever knowing why he was on stage in the first place.