At first, it seems like a potential disaster. The scuttlebutt on the floor of the grand ballroom inside the Renaissance Hotel is that the White House plans to suppress risky questions. There’s talk that the administration doesn’t want to play by the City Club’s “open forum” rules and has hand-picked friendly Republicans to stand by the microphones. After all, when President Bush is caught off guard he has a tendency to invent new words or mash up old cliches with Who lyrics.

“We suspected he’d manipulate the Q&A,” says Walt Nicholes, a member of Cleveland Peace Action. “We were promised there would be a lottery, that eight people would be randomly selected to ask the president questions. We learned just now, that has been changed. The president gets to pick. But he’s not going to see anyone past the front tables. Most of those are Republican-run, corporate tables.”

And as the room begins to fill, something else becomes apparent — state Republicans are snubbing their president. There is no sign of Ken Blackwell or Jim Petro or Mike DeWine. Are they distancing themselves during an election year, when Bush’s approval rating is lower than Nixon’s at the height of Watergate?

“I wouldn’t read anything into it,” non-answers Ohio GOP Chairman Bob Bennett.

Representatives from Huntington Bank seat themselves next to attorneys from Buckley King as lunch was served: chipotle-seasoned chicken with rice and beans (diversity!), with apple cobbler for dessert (tradition!).

Local press are then corralled into a small roped-off square, sequestered. Action News blowhard Matt Stevens is forced to tease within inches of Channel 5’s Tracy Carloss. And that’s just not cool. Channel 3’s Tom Beres wisely hides with the union cameramen.

Eventually all utensils are taken from the tables — lest someone fork the president? — and husky Secret Service men begin keeping people from the exits. The crowd rises as President Bush walks on stage, in front of a thrown-together backdrop of Cleveland’s cityscape. Bankers hold aloft videophones, trying to capture the moment in a few hundred grainy pixels.

As everyone takes their seats, Bush warms up the crowd with a short monologue. He talks about his invitation to speak in Cleveland. Bush claims City Club directors told him, “We believe in free speech, so you’re going to give us a speech for free.” When he laughs at his own joke, he sounds just like Will Ferrell.

Above the stage hang two giant flat screens which broadcast his talking head like misplaced props from Orwell’s 1984. The effect is creepy.

The real meat of his speech is the story of how America — which he pronounces “’Merica” — brought freedom to the Iraqi town of Tall ’Afar — pronounced alternately as “Talifer,” “Talafur” and “Tal Lafar.” But it’s a good speech, full of the harsh imagery of liberating a country in the midst of what we’re not supposed to call a civil war.

Then he stresses that in Iraq, “most of the country has remained relatively peaceful.” Not a good way to close in a city that lost nearly an entire battalion in the Iraqi town of Haditha last August.

“We will not leave that country to the terrorists that attacked America,” Bush says in closing.

Then comes the Q&A.

Bush points stage right to a woman standing a few rows back. She wants to know if the president, as a Christian, believes the war on terror is the beginning of the Apocalypse? (Boo-ya! Score one for the unvetted wackos.)

Again, the Will Ferrell laugh. “I haven’t really thought of it that way,” says Bush, before launching into several minutes of stump-speech-level rhetoric on security. He then tries the other side of the room.

A man standing there asks the president how he could restore confidence in his administration after invading Iraq over weapons that did not exist.

Whoa. Tough crowd.

Somewhere in his rambling answer about Saddam’s fascist regime, Bush says, “Look, we’re caring people. No one likes beheadings.” Yes, sir, we are against beheadings. Nice save.

Another man asks about Bush’s policy of “warrantless wiretaps.” “He’s talking about the terrorist surveillance program,” Bush tells the crowd, admitting that the issue is “quite a kerfluffle.” Put that way, it sounds not only constitutional, but cute.

Visibly worn after facing unusually relevant questions, Bush looks out at the crowd and says, “Anybody work here in this town?” He probably means it as a joke, suggesting we should return to our jobs and leave him alone. It falls flat, though, in a city not long ago dubbed the poorest in the nation.

He leaves the stage, stepping into an orgy of young Republicans seeking autographs. The local press remain confined until Bush has left the room and are forced to make due with Bob Bennett again, who has ever-so-casually passed by the reporters on his way out. What? You want to interview me on camera again? Well, OK. —   James Renner