Lemme tell you about one of my favorite episodes of Seinfeld. In it, George Costanza stuffs his face on a shrimp platter during a meeting and is insulted by a coworker who says “The ocean called and they’re running out of shrimp.” Being burned publicly hurts even more when a few minutes later, while driving home, George comes up with the “perfect” comeback : “The jerk store called, they’re running out of you!” For the rest of the episode, he tries to set up opportunities to use his comeback, only to have it backfire once he gets a chance to use it.

Well, having been burned publicly last week, another guy named George tried to set up his “jerk store” moment (via Oliver Willis) :

President Bush, stung by the erosion of his lead over Sen. John Kerry in post debate polls, has abruptly scheduled a major speech for tomorrow in hopes of halting Mr. Kerry’s momentum.

In a rare, last-minute alteration to the presidential schedule, Mr. Bush has scrapped a planned talk on medical liability and instead will give what the White House called a “significant speech” about the two central issues of the campaign ? the war on terrorism and the economy.

The president is said to be eager to rebut Mr. Kerry’s attacks on such issues, especially those that came during Thursday’s presidential debate.

Now we’ve all been in a situation in which we wish we had a time machine so we could win and argument that we lost. But for the President to do something as childish as pretending to have a “significant” speech so he can try to get in the last word ranks right up there with putting a bag of flaming poo on someone’s doorstep in things that the President should be above.

And in case there was any doubt about Bush’s comeback, here’s what Slate had to say :

Did CNN and MSNBC get hoodwinked this morning? Yesterday, the White House announced that President Bush would be delivering a “major policy address” on terrorism today. The cable news networks broadcast it live and in full. Yet the “address” turned out to be a standard campaign stump speech before a Pennsylvania crowd that seemed pumped on peyote, cheering, screaming, or whooping at every sentence.

The president announced no new policy, uttered not one new word about terrorism, foreign policy, or anything else. He did all the things he wanted to do in last Thursday’s debate?accuse his opponent of weakness, bad judgment, vacillation, and other forms of flip-floppery?though this time without a moderator to hush the audience, much less an opponent to bite back. And Bush loved it, smiling, smirking, raising his eyebrows, as if to say, “How ’bout that zinger?”

In short, the cable networks were lured into airing an hourlong free campaign ad for George W. Bush.
. . .
It’s hard to blame either network for taking the White House’s bait. Most presidents would want to deliver, right about now, a major address on the war against terror and the war in Iraq. In the last few days, one blow after another has struck the very foundations of Bush’s policies. The fact that, under the circumstances, Bush didn’t deliver a major policy address after all, despite his advance word, should embarrass not only CNN and MSNBC but, still more, President Bush.

You’ve gotta wonder, is tricking the media into airing one of your stump speeches really the best way to go? It seems like a great way to piss off the people who have been charitable enough to avoid fact checking his ass for four years.

But more importantly, the fact that Bush even felt the need to fake a major speech shows just how deeply Kerry hit him on Thursday. After just one debate, the Bush folks are seriously off-balance. The need to manufacture some positive spin is a good indicator of how well they think Bush is gonna do in the remaining debates. Like I said before, even with momentum on his side I still think it’s an uphill battle for Kerry to win the next two debates. If Kerry delivers a knockout blow, there’s always the chance that Bush will try to call for a do-over like he did today. Americans love an underdog, so there’s always the possibility that Bush could turn this pathetic little kid thing to his advantage.