The quiet man: Bush's stumbling call to arms

George Bush doesn't much like set-piece press conferences. The official explanation is that he regards the news media on such occasions as preening peacocks – and that's why when he stepped up to the podium on Thursday night it was only the second such prime-time exercise in the 26 months of his presidency.

The real reason is that he simply isn't very good at them. It showed again on Thursday evening, in the majestic setting of the East Room of the White House. Apart from the assertion, a rare instance of cocky, spontaneous Bush-speak, that the US would go for the second resolution, "no matter what the whip count is", he had nothing new to say. The main aim was to keep out of trouble and to reassure his countrymen.

He rarely answered a question directly, repeating almost by rote his standard lines about Saddam, America's right of pre-emptive self defence in the face of this grave threat to its freedom, how this was last chance for the United Nations to prove its relevance and how war was the very last resort.

Never did he really engage with a questioner. Part of the problem, it must be said, is the perennial failure of the White House press corps to follow up each other's questions and force the President to confront a point. American government leaders can thank their lucky stars they don't have to face questions in the House of Commons. But even from the pre-cooked answers, old truths were confirmed and new ones emerged.

First, it now goes without saying, Mr Bush has made up his mind to go to war. Some would say, that with the massive build-up in allied air patrols, which now go after Iraqi targets on the ground without prior provocation, war has already started.

Second, Mr Bush made clear that the second resolution so keenly sought by Tony Blair is, to all intents and purposes, irrelevant.

Resolution 1441 was justification enough. "We really don't need the United Nations' approval to act," he said, discounting suggestions that the joint US/British/Spanish draft will have a job winning the votes necessary for passage. "When it comes to our security, we do not need anyone's permission."

So much for the endeavours in New York of Colin Powell and Jack Straw to tinker with the text. Even Mr Blair, America's most trusty ally but in dire political straits at home if he fails to get UN blessing, was hung out to dry.

Third, Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, is also an irrelevance, with his talk of clusters, his nuance and his thinly veiled requests for more time.

Mr Bush's performance was a diplomatic pre-emptive strike of its own, an attempt to nullify in advance anything Mr Blix might have to say in his presentation yesterday.

The inspector, said Mr Bush, "needs to answer a single question, has the Iraqi regime fully and unconditionally disarmed, as required by Resolution 1441, or has it not?"

Finally, again and again Mr Bush played the Saddam/terrorism/al-Qa'ida card.

Americans, polls show, do not buy the argument that Iraq is an immediate threat. What does alarm them is the possibility, endlessly harped upon by this administration, that Saddam could be Bin Laden's armourer – even though there is not a shred of convincing evidence to that effect.

The same applies to the riff on religion and prayer – though in fairness, Mr Bush did not raise the topic himself. Instead he was bluntly asked: "How is your faith guiding you?"

The President replied that he prayed daily for "wisdom, guidance and strength", adding that one of the great things about America is "that there are thousands of people who pray for me".

Standard stuff from this White House – but words which will only re-inforce a sense that this is a man who believes the Almighty is at his side as he leads his Christian soldiers onward into war.

The whole thing was oddly quiet and dispassionate – which somehow made it scarier. Mr Bush spoke in almost a monotone, with long pauses as if searching for what to say next. Tom Shales, TV critic of the Washington Post, went further still in his assessment of Mr Bush's "foggy" performance.

Could it be, Mr Shales wondered, that given the pressures of the moment, that "the President may have been ever so slightly medicated?"

But beneath its outward certainty and behind the minds long since made up, the White House is worried.

Americans feel unloved, and will feel even more so as the second resolution goes down in flames next week.

Signs of the strain were everywhere. At home too, there are some worrying stirrings. The least of them, from the White House's viewpoint, is mounting criticism from Congressional Democrats, who effectively sold the pass when they granted Mr Bush sweeping war powers last October - in an unsuccessful attempt to save their skins at the mid-term elections.

Of more concern, perhaps, was another poll showing that in a presidential election tomorrow, Bush would lose to a generic Democrat by 48 per cent to 44 per cent.

Those figures, however, would probably be made meaningless by a resounding victory in Iraq. The greatest cause for alarm may be only indirectly connected with Iraq. February's unemployment figures came out yesterday. They were, said one analyst, "catastrophically weak".

More than 300,000 jobs lost in a month, is perhaps a sign of an imminent double-dip recession that will persist long after Saddam Hussein has been driven from power.

And this, George Bush remembers only too well, is what happened to his father.