Bush Sent to Timeout For Doing the Wrong Assignment

Sometimes Bushies just make it too easy, as Coates points out, with Karl Rove's recent WSJ piece:

"It all started on New Year's Eve in 2005. President Bush asked what my New Year's resolutions were. I told him that as a regular reader who'd gotten out of the habit, my goal was to read a book a week in 2006. Three days later, we were in the Oval Office when he fixed me in his sights and said, "I'm on my second. Where are you?" Mr. Bush had turned my resolution into a contest.

By coincidence, we were both reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals." The president jumped to a slim early lead and remained ahead until March, when I moved decisively in front. The competition soon spun out of control. We kept track not just of books read, but also the number of pages and later the combined size of each book's pages -- its "Total Lateral Area."

We recommended volumes to each other (for example, he encouraged me to read a Mao biography; I suggested a book on Reconstruction's unhappy end). We discussed the books and wrote thank-you notes to some authors.

At year's end, I defeated the president, 110 books to 95. My trophy looks suspiciously like those given out at junior bowling finals. The president lamely insisted he'd lost because he'd been busy as Leader of the Free World."

I mean, seriously? Bush has time to read 95 books in a year. For some reason this makes complete sense with where the Iraq War was in 2005 and the beginnings of the economic trembles. But Rove reminds me of Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's comments on the Chris Matthews Show [h/t Think Progress]:

MATTHEWS: Bob, he obviously relies a lot on instinct and is proud of that fact. Is that why he shows little intellectual curiosity about other people’s thinking?

WOODWARD: I think he’s impatient. I think, my summation: He doesn’t like homework. And homework means reading or getting briefed or having a debate. And part of the presidency, part of governing, particularly in this area, is homework, homework, homework.

MATTHEWS: And Obama?

WOODWARD: Obama is the opposite. He mainlines homework. He does, you know, where is extra credit.

Between the two items, you can see exactly how we got to where we are today. Bush has been too busy reading fluff to put any effort into doing his homework.
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