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Is there something he said or did that led you to believe he was as misguided as our Commander in Chief was about invading Iraq?
This guy is no dummy! He may not be Steven Hawking, but surely he is an astute enough politician to realize that he would be in a situation where he could not control the format or the dialogue. From his facial expression and other body language, I got the very strong expression that he was totally surprised by Bollinger's broadside. Did he assume that he would receive a more or less neutral introduction, such as the chief of state for a country does when welcoming the Olympics?
Perhaps his handlers did not brief him well for the experience. Surely, they had enough skinny to know what the general ambience was in the largest Jewish population outside of Israel? What about the WTC gaffe? Didn't anyone see that as having much the same effect as the Israeli PM visiting the Temple Mount?
I see it as a case of him being misinformed by his own staff - either because they failed to read the general situation or because nobody wanted to tell him that the crowd down at the Long Branch was in a knot-tying mood.
I think he made the best of it he could under the circumstances, but he was clearly not expecting what he got.
