Smarter Than The Average President

christina applegate and jennifer tilly are two very smart, sexy, funny women who share a very unique talent.  both are able to conjure up characters who say and do such incredibly stupid things with such finesse, it is sometimes difficult not to confuse christina with kelly bundy or jennifer with damn near a sorority of goofy sounding ditzy bimbos.

brilliant as they may be, they have nothin on george w. bush.  

i may seem gullible and naive but i've done seed da light. 

my epiphany occured yesterday morning during bob schieffer's 'face the nation' interview with the president. 

after querying bush about hamas' unexpected victory in last week's elections, iran's apparent determination to arm itself with nuclear weapons, iraq, hurricane katrina and the lengths to which a president can go during wartime--all of which george bumbled thru in his own inimitable goofy style--schieffer moved on to the current controversy over government eavesdropping.

SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you this, Mr. President because I just have never quite understood this, and maybe you could clear this up. As I understand the law, you had the right to wiretap or eavesdrop on anyone and have three days to tell the court about it. How does that slow you down?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I asked the same question to the people designing the program. I said, how come we can't use the procedures which you just described, and they said it won't work. It doesn't fit in with what Mike Hayden described as "hot pursuit." 

ME: huh?

PRESIDENT BUSH (cont): I have looked at this program from all angles, and my dilemma and my problem is I can't explain to you how it works in order to justify your question without telling the enemy what we are doing.

And this debate is an interesting debate. I'm troubled by it only because the enemy listens, and they see what we are doing, and these are smart people, and they will adjust.

ME: wow!

PRESIDENT BUSH (cont): And one of the interesting questions, Bob, about this whole debate is whether or not people think we are at war or people think this is kind of an isolated group of people that may or may not hit us,

ME: (trying to imagine who coulda forgot we were at war or that al quaeda was a kinda of isolated group who may or may not hit us...and then i realized he must  be referring to the department of homeland security and fema, as well as anyone who hasn't hadda slip outta his or her shoes before boarding an airplane)>

PRESIDENT BUSH (cont): and I'm--perhaps it was because I was a sitting president when 9/11 occurred. Perhaps because I remember my words going to Congress just saying I'm not going to ever forget what took place, and I will use all the power and my authority within the Constitution to protect the American people, but I view this situation we're in as war, and therefore I must protect the American people with the tools available to me.

so i'm sitting there, appropriately shocked and awed, thinking, 'jeez, if only all of us had been sitting presidents when 9/11 occurred, we might not have so easily forgotten what took place...' and very uncharitably wondering if perhaps bush had managed to equal or top his performance during the first debate of 2004..the one in which he kept explaining over and over again how he worked hard...doing hard work...the hard work of working hard. 

then it hit me. 

no matter what scheiffer or anyone else asked him, our president was as many steps ahead of his interviewers as yogi bear was jellystone park's mr ranger.   like more than enuff to make all them pic-a-nic baskets (or, in this case, serious questions) just plain disappear as if they'd never existed (or been asked).