In the NY Post, John Podhoretz on the President’s press conference: Bush Hangs Tough.

The purpose of the White House press corps was to make the president confess to weakness - to corner him into creating the soundbite of all soundbites, in which Bush would acknowledge his errors as president and thereby give John Kerry all the material he would need for a killer TV ad or two.

The president achieved his purpose. The press corps did not achieve its purpose. He would not fall into their astonishingly blatant trap. He simply refused to offer a satisfactory answer to four - four! - different questions demanding that he either enumerate or apologize for his failures.

No one should be fooled by the way he stumbled through some of his answers about his mistakes as president. Bush knew exactly what he was doing, as he always does.

Rather than apologize to the 9/11 families for the terror strike that day, the president said the responsibility for the attacks rested squarely on the shoulders of Osama bin Laden. And it’s a mark of how demented the debate has gotten in the past few weeks that this simple statement of truth seemed bracing and even daring.