Karl Rove is sending me emails now. I'm so happy..... But this article represents how far Rove and Bush have fallen. Rove is writing an article in
December 26, 2008

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Karl Rove is sending me emails now. I'm so happy.....

But this article represents how far Rove and Bush have fallen. Rove is writing an article in the WSJ trying to tell America that Bush actually likes to read books. How humiliating this column must have been for him to write:

With only five days left, my lead is insurmountable. The competition can't catch up. And for the third year in a row, I'll triumph. In second place will be the president of the United States. Our contest is not about sports or politics. It's about books.

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...read on.

Karl, no matter what silly-ass columns you write about Bush's Books, America still hates him and always will.

Seventy-five percent of those questioned in a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they're glad President Bush is going, with 23 percent indicating they'll miss him.

Matt Stoller adds:

I sort of understand Rove's strategy of insisting that George W. Bush is an intellectual heavyweight, even though he's obviously just a dolt that loves fart jokes. Rove enjoys tweaking liberals by preying on their insecurities, which he used to do when he was powerful and the Bush administration was taken seriously by insisting that they were effete eggheads out of touch with the real America. Only, now, there's nothing whatsoever admirable about the Bush Presidency and no one really believes Rove is a political genius, and so Rove is reduced to pretending that Bush is some sort of bookworm.

Rove is a disciple of the Lee Atwater school of smear politics and because of this, our country is suffering dearly. And if we believe this book-reading contest, well then, how many days of Bush's presidency were filled with him reading book after book (95 books in '06, 51 books in '07 and 40 books in '08) while our country is torturing people, fighting two wars, illegally wiretapping, and watching an economic meltdown of historic proportions?

I love to read too, but I think my job requirements are a little less stressful than being the president. Do you think his persistent book reading was a way to remain in a state of deep denial about the state of our nation? Will Rove's next column be about Bush's iPod?

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