5 Feet of Fury

Remember that commonplace liberal jab at President Bush, that he’d admitted to not reading the morning papers?

I got into it once with a former acquaintance, a Canadian “moderate” blogger (that means “liberal”) whose winning smile and considerable personal charm endeared him to many of my fellow “conservatives.”

Being temperamentally immune to the charms of “charm,” I was slightly less smitten.

During one online exchange, he mocked George W. Bush’s baldfaced admission that he didn’t read the New York Times.

“Surely you know,” I responded, “that the President of the United States receives a morning briefing package that contains information the New York Times can only dream of getting its hands on?”

I don’t recall the blogger’s reply.

You see, we’re meant to be impressed by this:

President John F. Kennedy was sitting up in bed reading the morning papers at about 8:45 am on October 16, 1962 when McGeorge Bundy, his national security advisor, came in to inform him that the Soviet Union was secretly putting nuclear missiles in Cuba. Within two hours and forty-five minutes a special committee had been created, its members selected, contacted, brought to the White House, and were seated around the cabinet table to discuss what should be done.

***
Thank God JFK was no mere mortal man, out of bed at a decent time — say, 6 a.m. — otherwise he’d have been able to bring the world to the brink of annihilation a few house sooner.

In any event, I keep thinking of that exchange whenever I hear Obama’s “I read about it in the newspapers just like you did” “explanation” for his ignorance of this latest (that we know of) IRS mischief.

If the President is telling the truth, he’s a fool. (Your leader still wastes precious time perusing warmed-over “news” from dubious, biased sources?

If he’s lying, then… he’s lying.